A healthy cure for a sweet tooth

I’ve been continuing with my food goals as I wrote about previously. Some days I succeed, other days I fail, but overall I think I’m doing better at eating healthy, nutrient dense, whole plant foods, with an emphasis on using what grows on the homestead first. One struggle I have is my serious sweet tooth! I thought that today I’d share one of my solutions to this in case others struggle with the same thing. Whenever I’ve made versions of it for potlucks it has always been a real hit, even with those who could care less about the healthy part!

(Please note some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. What this means is that should you click through them and make a qualifying purchase I will receive a commission which I’d certainly appreciate since it helps support this blog project. However, this shouldn’t increase your cost any, and certainly don’t ever feel like I’m pressuring you to buy things through the links I offer or anywhere else. I’m all about being frugal first!)

On Dr. Greger’s website, NutritionFacts.org, I saw one of his videos where he noted that there are only 2 sweeteners out there that are actually health promoting, meaning the more of them you eat, the healthier you are. I really wanted them to be honey and maple syrup… but alas, those really are essentially a refined sugar. No, the two healthy sweeteners are dates (including date sugar which is really just dried, pulverized dates) and molasses. Of the two dates are the healthiest.

With that information in mind you won’t be surprised to learn those form the basis of this “recipe”. I put recipe in quotes because you’re not really going to get clear precise measurements out of me on this, rather more of a general idea of what I mix in. I should also note that this pretty much fails in terms of my goal of sourcing food from my property first, though I hope to be able to change that in the future.

Essentially what I’m making is a fruit and nut mix. Naturally there is a concern that eating a lot of calorically dense foods like fruit and nuts would cause weight gain, however, the studies show otherwise. I’m also adding in spices which have a lot of antioxidants and can be anti-inflammatory.

So as my base I’ve been fortunate that my local grocery store carries something called baking dates. These are really just dates already ground into a paste. As an added bonus they are really cheap at the grocery store, basically $2 a package. Unfortunately it looks like on-line they cost much more. Hopefully you can find them locally as well. I have made my own date paste by simply running the pitted dates through one of my juicers that crushes and grinds things up.

To this date paste I mix in a generous portion of molasses though this could be left out if you don’t like the rather strong flavor it has. I happen to really like it. Molasses always reminds me of my grandfather who after dinner would say my sister or I could eat his slice of wild strawberry pie my grandmother made, and he would make his desert bread and molasses. At first I thought he was giving up something for us, but later I came to realize that’s actually what he preferred.

Anyway, I like to mix this up in a stainless steel mixing bowl with a stout fork. Usually I’ll add a bit of water to thin this out some and allow easier mixing as I add more of the ingredients. This date, molasses mix is the sweet glue that will hold everything together.

From here I’m known to change up what else I add in. For yesterday’s mix I next added a generous amount of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a bit of dried powdered ginger. These all get stirred in until evenly dispersed. Often at this point I’ll add in some ground nuts, or if I’m being lazy and don’t want to grind any up, I’ll use some raw almond butter since that is essentially the same thing. Depending on how thick things get I might add a bit more water. I want it sort of thick, but don’t really want to struggle too much to stir it.

If you are into chocolate, I’ll note that sometimes I’ll use a generous amount of cocoa powder instead of, or in addition to the spices. That’s nutritious too, it’s the sugar and fats added to chocolate that are unhealthy.

Once all the liquid, paste, and powder type ingredients are mixed together I start adding in the chunky stuff. This time I used a couple handfuls of diced dried honeycrisp apples made from the crop last fall, along with a lot of raisins. For the nuts I went with some raw cashew halves and pieces. All this get mixed together.

Finally to finish thickening up the mix so it could be formed into bars or balls I’ll add both rolled oats, and ground flax seeds. The flax works great both to thicken and offers excellent nutrition, being on of Dr. Greger’s daily dozen, foods he recommends eating every day.

That’s basically it. When I’m feeling ambitious or making these for potlucks I usually do form them into bars or small balls which I will put in my food dehydrator. They will be quite sticky initially, but as they dry out more they become easier to handle. I suspect I could also roll them in date sugar, or maybe finely chopped nuts. I haven’t tried baking them at a low temperature, but I believe this would have the same basic effect as drying them. Generally though I just eat it straight out of the mixing bowl, covering and storing the leftovers in the fridge for a sweet snack that lasts me several days. It’s good with fresh fruit too. (Edited to add in a request for a photo of the finished product. Honestly I pretty much ate most of if straight out of the bowl with some fresh strawberries. It did seem to work formed into small balls and rolled in date sugar.)

I haven’t tried it yet, but I believe this could work well with mashed bananas mixed in. I have made it with fresh black raspberries in the past too. That was quite good. There are lots of possible variants to this.

Even though I know all the ingredients are healthy for me, when tasting it I still generally feel like it’s a completely decadent desert. I need to keep reminding myself there is no need to feel guilty eating it. The more of it I eat the healthier I will be!

Studio Snippet

I’ve started working on chasing a multi-node vessel, one where I raise the initial disk around multiple points instead of the normal single point. I don’t often chase this style piece. In fact, it’s been years since I last did one. There are extra challenges to it. Initially I had to make sure to keep a lot more space between the nodes than I normally do so that I could get my chasing tools in there later to do the work. Then there is a bit of extra challenge in filling it with wax to provide that internal support for the chasing. The problem is that the undulating rim can only be filled with the liquid wax up to the lowest level. To get any of the higher sections supported I need to wait until the wax cools enough to be moldable. At that point I can go back and push the wax up into all the higher spots. This isn’t that hard to do. The wax is intended for bronze sculptors to mold their models out of after all. It just requires a bit more timing instead of my normal fill it and walk away approach.

Once I started chasing I quickly remembered how much more challenging this could be. I left enough room for the chasing tools to fit down into the deep spaces between the nodes, but the catch is that my fingers can’t also fit down in there. This means I have to hold the tools much higher up than I want to, resulting in a real struggle to control and hold them in place when hammering.

There is a reason I chose to do this Lucent Terrain style design on it though. It is a much more forgiving design style for missed hammer blows or altered lines.

The piece is coming along nicely, if awkwardly as far as working goes. I hope to finish the chasing work later this week.

I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my main website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.