XAGAVE

I'm hooked on Xagave. It's a great sugar substitute, low glycemic, and it really does taste good. The guy who formulated it uses the nectar from two agave plants, and that is the reason for the X. When I first learned about agave several years ago I decided I couldn't afford it, and I was just going to use less sugar. Two kids later and realizing how much sugar we really were eating I've decided we can't afford not to replace the sugar in our diet. My family's health is worth the extra price.
We've replaced maple syrup with xagave. To make it I just add about a tsp of maple flavoring to the 36 oz squeeze bottle of agave. Now when my kids are pouring the "syrup" and inch thick on their pancakes, waffles, french toast, and yes even fried eggs I just smile. I used to limit the syrup and in fact I'd stopped buying it because of the high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients that made it so unhealthy.
So, this morning while I was eating my oatmeal that had xagave in it, I decided I ought to post about it. Go to http://www.xagave.com/ and read all about the benefits- fewer calories and low glycemic - just to name a couple.

Zea

Pico de gallo green smoothie

We make a pico de gallo sauce that is really good. You use Roma tomatoes, cilantro, white onion, jalapenos, cucumber and lime juice - cube everything and put juice of a lime or two on it. Oh, and add salt to taste. It never turns out the same for us because the vegetables are more potent at times or we use a bit more of one thing, etc. Guess one of these days we should come up with a recipe but it's kind of fun to have it be a bit different and just enjoy it. It is absolutely yummy with chips or however you want to use it.

We made a batch and it ended up being a BIG batch and it was a little hotter than usual. We have a 5-year old that just could not eat enough of it. That got me wondering if it had something in it that his body needed and how my body would react to all that wonderful blend in a larger amount. I was also wondering how we were going to eat all of it so....

In my creative thinking, I took some spinach and then put a few spoonfuls in, added the juice of 2 more limes and about a cup of water and blended away. WOW!!! I think I'll name it "Pico de gallo Green Smoothie Jolt". It is really good and I believe anyone who enjoys the Mexican flavors would also enjoy it.

I think I needed to add a few wheat sprouts. You wouldn't have even known they were in there, just like in all the other smoothies. I wonder why I didn't do that? Live and learn!

Basak

I have a new theory about drinking water

I keep learning of more and more people who take a supplement of HCI (hydrocloric acid) to help with their stomach acids.

Water content in God's created foods is high as compared to most of the foods we eat. So when Adam and Eve ate, there was quite a bit of liquid that went into their stomachs and maybe just helped slosh the food around and helped mix up the gastric acids in the digestion process.

At breakfast, I thought about what the people in the world eat today and how the stomach would look after - dry, dry, dry!! It's trying to make the gastric acids but it would be just this big blob of chewed food (and sometimes not so chewed). So the parts of the stomach that make these things would be squished, crowded -- unable to perform their tasks as they should. And what little they did make could not be mixed in sufficiently.

I was doing laundry while eating and the analogy came that it would be a bit the same if I put just the soap into the washer with the clothes but no water. I have an energy efficient one that doesn't need much water but surely does a good job so in the analogy the water in the stomach would not have to be lots.

And then what the world teaches about not drinking water with our meals came to mind.

Could it be we need the liquid when we eat? The world teaches us that we need to be drinking LOTS of water. Maybe more of that needs to be with what we eat. The world sometimes teaches that we should drink 1/2 hour before a meal to help curb hunger but even that would be processed before we loaded that ole stomach up.

Years ago I always drank with my meals and I was fit and trim. Of course I was younger, too; but when I adopted the world's thinking of not drinking with meals, things were different.

MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm

I'm going to be drinking more water with my meals! And just so you know, to me the other things the world has us drink with our meals would not be the same.

Basak