NEED SWEETS

Sometimes you just need something sweet.  This week has been hard, and today even harder. I recommend the following to all who attempt this path:
Get rid of everything 'illegal'.
Buy lots of dates (preferably whole).
Eat dates alone for a big sweet zing.
Blend dates with other things to make weird stuff that is sweet.  


Tonight, I blended dates with peanut butter (natural, no added oils or sugars), and threw in some chocolate chips (more on that later), and quick oats.  They are gooey, but I patted them out on a piece of saran wrap to make patties, that hopefully will dry out some.  I think though, I could make something similar to those no-bake cookies I used to make.  These were good but sticky.


Ok, so back to the issue with chocolate chips.  The true whole-foods people really recommend some that are not made with cane sugar (or evaporated cane juice, which is cane sugar that is less processed).  One recommends grain-sweetened, and I don't even really know what that means, except I have seen rice syrup and barley syrup on the shelves as sweeteners, so maybe that's what they are talking about (although they would rather you just use cocoa nibs).  Sugar is definitely on my list of 'limited use', but I'm ok with some in something as crucial as chocolate chips.  However, what I have found is that I pay very close attention to how many grams of sugar they have.  AND, I'm only buying chocolate that has no milk-fat or milk products.  However, since they are often made on similar machinery, they can say 'may contain trace amounts of milk' - I'm ok with that, because these are basically vegan but way cheaper.  As far as sugar goes, I have found that 8g (equivalent to 2 tsps) is too sweet.  4g (as found in Dagoba 73% cocoa drops) have quite a bite - if you are craving chocolate, these are good to have on hand, and sucking on 2 or 3 will do you well.  However, if craving sweet and chocolate, they don't quite do it.  My favorite chocolate chip right now is by Guittard, coming in at 6g of sugar per serving, and I think 65% cocoa.  Looking online, it looks like they actually have a fair-trade version, but I'm not sure of the sugar contents.  Dagoba chips are fairly traded which is a big bonus.  They are expensive, but being as I eat way less of those, they last quite a while.  


I made a good gingerbread recipe from Happy Herbivore the other day, substituting dates for sugar, and persimmon goo for pumpkin puree.  I think it needed more goo because it was a little dense.  Or, maybe I need to experiment with adding some other kinds of flour to the mix.  I also need to cook up some navy beans so I can make some more chocolate chip cookies.


I do think that at least now when I binge on something sweet, I'm getting some easy-to-burn calories, as opposed to easy-to-store fat calories, and some beneficial vitamins, minerals and fiber.  (because unlike the saying 'calories are calories', plant calories, are easier to burn off as heat energy!)


If I can figure out how to make posts here that are recipes and not posts, I'll do that.  Otherwise, I may post some recipes here.