easter eggsperiment #1

so... trying to be low fructose at easter time isn't easy. Here's what we've done to mitigate sugar consumption at this special time of year.

1) lower fructose hot cross buns
I used this recipe from taste.com as the basis.
My modifications were:
- substitute dextrose for the caster sugar
- substitute a diced green apple for half the sultanas
- lower the oven temperature to 170 C
It didn't quite taste as good but it was better for us and we didn't feel like we were missing out.

2) lower fructose easter eggs
So this 'eggsperiment' didn't quite work but here goes.
I used the low fructose chocolate recipe from here.
My modifications were:
- substitute dextrose for the regular sugar and add twice as much
(nb the dessicated coconut is 6g sugar/100g which isn't fructose free but not too bad considering)
This chocolate is great if you like it really coconutty and perfect if you don't really like dark chocolate. It doesn't however set very hard so isn't really appropriate for making into hollow eggs.
It did work fine in chocolate moulds so we channelled a northern hemisphere easter and made spring flower chocolates - I particularly liked the daffodils.

Tomorrow we try the egg moulds with dark chocolate. I'll keep you posted.

my birthday ice cream

There are a bunch of great low fructose cake recipes out there. I've made a couple of cakes from The Sweet Poison Quit Plan and they've all been good.

For my birthday this year, however, I made this delicious ice cream and as my gift to you, I thought I'd share my recipe.

my choc mint ice cream

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
1 cup mint leaves (tightly packed), you can use more :-)
1 cup dextrose
2 cups thickened cream
1 tbsp vanilla
30g chopped 85% Green & Black's chocolate

Method:
Heat the milk in a saucepan until it's steaming. Take it off the heat and add the mint leaves. Leave them for half an hour and then blend using a stick blender.
Add the sugar and mix further to dissolve. Stir in the cream and vanilla.
Put in the fridge for as long as you can, and then even in the freezer for an hour to make it as cold as you can.
Churn in an ice cream maker until it's almost overflowing (if you're using a 1.5L machine). Add the chopped up chocolate a couple of minutes before it's finished.
You might still need to stick it in the freezer for a couple of hours - depends on how soft you like it.

In other good news a fair few ice cream cones fall below 4g of sugar/100g, unfortunately it's not the waffle cones.

Enjoy :-)

two months on - I finally get it

We are now 2 months into our low fructose journey. I've loved the whole process but I feel like in the last week I finally get it.

I hardly snack any more. I eat less at meal times. I don't know what the fuss is about, having pretty much no interest in lollies, cakes, ice cream etc. Weird. I even have quite yummy low fructose choc mint ice cream (made with real mint) in the freezer and I'm not really interested.

We had a cake on Monday night for my stepmother-in-law's 60th birthday. BTW I made David Gillespie's Coconut Meringue Cake (from the Sweet Poison Quit Plan) - really good, even got the thumbs up from the rest. And I realised this is the first piece of cake I've had since I made one for new years eve. 30 days later. Unheard of.

In other news my 4yo has started eating 85% cocoa chocolate. He quite enjoys it. Even his tastes must be changing. (We've been a bit more gentle with him, I'm still formulating my approach to children and fructose, I hope to post about it soon). A couple of weeks ago he wasn't interested. I think 85% chocolate has been the one thing that we eat outside the 4g sugar/100g of food guideline. I haven't changed my habit of wanting something to eat with my cup of coffee. But now I'm completely satisfied with half a square of chocolate (5 whole grams of chocolate, less than one gram of sugar). Rather than 1 or 2 or 3 chocolate biscuits...

We've got a few strawberry plants (5 or 6 I think) and we finally have some fruit but you know one or at the maximum two are ripe at the same time. So it's lovely my son can pick a strawberry every day or so. I kind of think that this is what our fruit consumption ought to be like. Seasonal. A bit sparse. No gorging. But delicious.

Surprise, surprise another outcome has been my hypoglycaemia is more under control even with less snacking. No plunging blood sugar levels has been fantastic.

Well it really has taken this long to rid our systems of so many of the negative effects of fructose. But we feel fantastic and it's something we really hope to continue for the rest of our lives. Something that really helped was Sarah Wilson's 8 week I Quit Sugar plan. And I think 8 weeks is a good span of time to really feel the benefits. It's a pretty quick but comprehensive way to start this journey (I'd pick up a copy of David Gillespie's Sweet Poison Quit Plan as well). So I've decided to be an affiliate. If you'd like to get a copy of Sarah's e-book just click through from my sidebar and I'll benefit from your brilliant decision :-) You can also join in with a whole community who are up to week 5 of their quitting sugar journey.

veggie patch inspiration

We've been the recipient of some lovely veggie patch produce recently. Very kind. I'm loving it. So now searching The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander for some good ideas. Seriously the best asset for the Australian cook. We went back to an old favourite for the zucchini. And everyone loved it (though we had to leave the tomato off for the two little ones). I only have access to a less recent copy at the moment so it didn't have the zucchini slice recipe that I normally use, but you can also find it here, I just added the slices of tomato. So yum. BTW so filling - perfect for staving off any sugar cravings.

We've also been enjoying some beetroot. Although these were a bit fibrous, I think we let them go too far. The interesting thing is that you can use the young leaves as salad leaves. But I was tempted to leave them as table decoration. They are so pretty and tint the water a lovely pink. 

For our beetroot salad I used roasted beetroot, mixed salad leaves, blanched asparagus, roasted pine nuts, perino tomatoes, goats cheese and my new favourite dressing. I also served it with roast beef.

But can I go on about my new favourite dressing? Yes I can. I was recently was given a beautiful bottle of roasted walnut oil from the Loire Valley. So I searched for some dressing recipes since walnuts go fabulously with beets so I loosely adapted this one found here. Seeing as I'm loathe to add another speciality vinegar to my vinegar collection, my recipe is as follows:

Walnut Oil Dressing
1/4 cup walnut oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp seeded mustard

Whisk together. Yum.

Finally, we're trying this one tonight so I'll have to report back. But this sounds fantastic. A gratin recipe using the stalks of your silver beet. It also has cream and blue cheese so it's bound to be delish. This is another Cook's Companion recipe. And it makes good use of the bits I don't use so much anyway. I made a silver beet and ricotta pie with the leaves. Here's something to try with the stalks. Brilliant.

Actually one more thing. This evening we're trying mint ice cream with a bunch of fresh mint leaves from the back yard. The mixture is cooling as we speak and should be ready for churning tonight. Mmmmm.

adventures in low fructose cooking: muffins

Well we're 6 weeks in to our fructose-free adventure. I was hoping that by now we'd have a bit more control over our appetites. Mine seems to be still fructose effected.

We have been eating a bit of 85% chocolate mainly because on holidays we weren't able to source anything stronger. BTW the Green & Black's 85% with Madagascan vanilla is far superior to the Lindt equivalent.

I also want to try eating more slowly and waiting (15-20mins) to give myself a chance to feel full.

I'm also taking the advice from The Sweet Poison Quit Plan of sticking to sweetener alternatives rather than glucose while we wait for our addiction and appetites to come under control.

Anyway I've gotten hold of Natvia which is I suppose the best of a bad bunch. It is derived from a natural source, part of the Stevia plant, is much sweeter than sugar but has many less calories. However, it hasn't been used for a very long time so the jury's out as to whether it has any harmful effects. A good thing however is that I don't think it has as nasty an after taste as some of the other sweeteners.

So here's our first go at baking with Natvia. We made banana muffins, a variation on the blueberry muffin recipe found on the natvia website. Find the recipe here. And while they're not fructose-free because of the banana, 2 bananas are spread over 22 muffins...

Our's were about half the size of the recipe so only needed 15mins. And they were quite crumbly so I may have over cooked them.

None of us could stop at one. They were a success all round. Even little badger thoroughly enjoyed his.

one month on - still fructose free

Well we survived the holiday period largely fructose-free. I think the Easter egg craziness might be the only time of year that is harder but we haven't felt deprived at all.

I meant to say earlier but I followed through and got rid of all our pantry and fridge items which didn't fall inside the 4g of sugar/100g of food guideline. It helped that we were moving and I didn't want to pack things I wasn't planning on using any longer anyway. We have moved in with my mother-in-law but fortunately she doesn't like a lot of sweet food anyway so it shouldn't be too hard.

We have started eating a bit more fruit. You can eat 1-2 pieces of fruit a day on the plan, so we're not going overboard. And we're trying to stick to the recommended fruit such as berries, kiwi, pears and citrus.

The other good thing is that with a good supply of dextrose we have started making sweet treats which pass the low fructose test. In particular we've tried a few recipes from the Sweet Poison Quit Plan. So far I've whipped up some ice cream, a butter cake and some vanilla egg custard. Yummo. I can also recommend the frozen mango yogurt from Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals, just substitute glucose syrup for the honey - although you'd probably go through your day's allowance of fruit in one go.

We have also enjoyed a fair few croissants - our new bakery treat of choice. Now just to make sure that it remains a sometimes food.

Giggi's 'artistic' fuzzy shot of a friend and I at Max Brenner's. Fortunately my husband was on the ball and ordered our coffees and croissants without the molten chocolate slathered all over them.

I'm surprised that 3 cafes we've visited in the last 10 days have supplied a small sweet treat gratis with the coffee. But I've been even more surprised by how well Giggi has coped with me turning them down. I think it's great that we've started this journey while we still have quite a bit of control over what he eats. Hopefully it will make it easier when he has more freedom in this area. Perhaps he won't have the taste for it and certainly he'll understand more of why we're doing what we're doing.

Which is:
    1) have healthy weights
    2) go back to normal appetites not subverted by fructose
    3) the prevention or mitigation of diseases such as diabetes, hyperglycemia, high cholesterol etc.

Happy New Year to you all. Here's to a happy and healthy 2012. Let me know if you're planning on joining us on this fructose-free but fulfilling ride.

adventures in fructose-free treats: icecream

It's been great hanging out with some others on this fructose-free journey and picking up their tips and tricks. The main message for me is that it seems to be more difficult the second time, so best to stick with the program. The other thing is that croissants make excellent sugar free treats (as long as you don't buy those ones from the supermarket that you stick in the oven - it has to be the super buttery flaky ones... I think I can hack it).

In the spirit of the boxing day sales we picked up an ice cream maker. I wasn't sure which one to get since Choice hasn't done a review (and seeing as it makes their top 20 of least used, most re-gifted gifts, I'm not sure they're going to do a review any time soon). So, we just waltzed into DJs picked their most popular model which also was on sale and we're giving it a go.

Tah-Dah...

We chose The Sweet Poison Quit Plan chocolate ice cream recipe. Super easy. No eggs even. And I'm loving using all my mum's retro baking accessories.

I also inherited my sister-in-law's dextrose stash as they move overseas next week. It looks a little like caster sugar but is less sweet, weighs less and is squidgy like brown sugar. It takes a bit of getting used to. But here goes.

Now here we get to amateur hour. I hadn't realised that you need to freeze the ice cream maker's mixing bowl for 12+ hour before you can make any ice cream. Oops. So the ice cream mixture went into the fridge to be cooled which isn't a disaster and we ended up putting on the churner at 8am this morning.

Giggi waiting patiently for the churning to occur:

Churning under way:

Final product after a couple of hours in the freezer, with some blueberries and grated 99% Lindt:

The verdict pretty good first effort. Probably could have done with another churn as I didn't leave the freezer bucket in long enough to begin with. But yummy! Here's to our first ice cream this month!

a sugar-free update

Well, we've been largely fructose free for 2 weeks now. I'm still addicted to sugar. I still crave something sweet with my coffee. I haven't caved yet though :-)

I've finally started reading David Gillespie's book 'The Sweet Poison Quit Plan' and it's been thoroughly motivating. Plus I've lost a kilo and a half, which is helpful too. Feels weird to lose weight while bumping up your intake of chips, cheese etc. while riding out the addiction phase...

I'm still enjoying being less food focused. But I haven't adjusted to my hunger signals being more finely tuned. I forget to dish myself less and still eat too fast. The result has been a few evenings where I have just felt uncomfortably full even though I've eaten less than I used to. It really is quite amazing and I'm hoping that I can stick to it.

It's still hard for the kids. Giggi keeps asking for pieces of fruit. But I've got more savoury snacks on hand. And the other day when the dr was handing out lollipops we went to a cafe and had a mineral water instead. Giggi wasn't ecstatic about it but he wasn't devastated either. We'll keep persisting.

Here's the largely fructose free cake I made for Rene's birthday:

You can find the recipe here.

BTW he wasn't turning 2, it's just that it was 2 people's birthday. It really wasn't very sweet. I think I would add some sweetness to the 'biscuit base' or maybe use a more sweet nut such as cashews. But the filling was delicious.