Tag: brown sugar

Vaping and Dieting

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, E-Cigarette, Food, Health, Products I Like, Recipes, Vaping, Weight2 Comments

zeus ejuice

Last year I decided after doing a bit of research that vaping sweet flavors would help me lose weight.  Of course, I realize that only diet and exercise will help me lose weight, but my reasoning was that if I had sweet flavors in my mouth, then I wouldn’t be tempted to eat the empty calories, because I just wanted the flavor.  So if I had the flavors, then I wouldn’t be consuming the calories.  Well, that theory was flawed because without a proper diet, I was still consuming empty calories from my regular day-to-day food.

Now that I am on track and eating healthy food and have already lost more than 20lbs (1/5/2013 – 2/19/2013), I started vaping again.  I placed a new order with Zeus eJuice for a 10ml bottle of Banana Nut Bread, and they comped me a 3ml bottle of Grape Jolly Rancher flavored e-liquid.  Of course, the e-liquid I buy doesn’t have any nicotine at all so I don’t have to worry about an addiction.

Since I am on my healthy diet, I don’t have a craving for sweet foods anymore.  Although I do have the occasional craving, I will eat fruit instead of cookies or ice cream.  I do have a recipe for a fruit cookie that uses banana, apple, oatmeal, vanilla and a tiny amount of brown sugar.  It’s not the same as eating a cookie, but I psych myself out, so to me it is.  It’s all mental.  The vaping is all mental too.  If I vape sweet flavors then I’m getting the sweet taste that I wanted without the calories, right?  Well, it only works if I say it works, and so far it does because I haven’t even craved the fruit cookies.

For anyone wanting to lose weight and think that vaping will help, let me just dispel that, it doesn’t.  I mean, it will give you the flavors, but you won’t actually lose weight.  This is my advice for losing weight and it is what helped me to lose more than 20lbs.  Eat healthy!  I started using this app on my phone called Noom Weight Loss Coach.  It’s only available for the Android (sorry iPhone users).  It’s free, or you could pay the monthly fee or pay for the full product.  It’s your choice.  Try it out for free and see if you like it.  Noom is just a tool to help me log my food and exercise and it gives me great articles, but the food I am eating is what helped me to lose weight.  I’ve been eating the Weight Watchers Smart Ones meals for lunch and dinner and also eating steamed fresh or frozen vegetables.

The vaping gives me the sweet flavors that I am not eating so I don’t eat empty calories.  Vaping is pretty much a tool the same way the Noom app is a tool, they just do different jobs.  I’d say it’s still worth the time and money, and if you are a smoker you could benefit from vaping because it will help you save money and possibly quit smoking too.

So if you want to start vaping, do this.  Go to Smoktek.com and buy a SmokTek Express eGo CE4 650 E-Cigarette Kit for only $20.  It’s a good idea to also buy a changeable coil clearomizer (round tip) with replacement coils too.  Then go to ZeuseJuice.com and buy a 10ML bottle of whatever flavor you want.

These are the flavors that I like because they taste sweet.  Banana Nut Bread, Pumpkin Pie, Grape Jolly Rancher, Strawberry, Raspberry (and let’s just assume all the fruits), Demeter’s Harvest, Candy Corn and Vanilla Ice Cream.  It’s good to experiment with different flavors, but don’t mix too many with the same wick because the flavor stays with that wick, so if you use candy corn then dump it back into the bottle and put pumpkin pie in there, it’s not going to taste like pumpkin pie anymore, it’s going to taste like pumpkin pie and candy corn and the two don’t mix.  It will probably end up tasting more like vomit lol.  Trust me.  I haven’t done that with those flavors, but I have done it.

You could try another website for your e-liquids, or go to a smoke shop to get it like that same day, but you will end up paying double.  Zeus e-Juice charges $6 for a 10ML bottle which is equivalent to a carton of cigarettes.

So that’s my advice for anyone who wants to lose weight with vaping.  You don’t have to take my advice because what might work for me might not work for you, but you have to ask yourself, do you really want it to work for you?  If you want it to work, then it will work.  Everything is psychological.  Anyway, give it a go and tell me if it worked for you.

My Homemade Peanut Butter

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Food, Health, Noom, RecipesLeave a comment

peanut butter

Peanut butter seems to cost a lot of money these days.  Don’t you wish you could make your own at more than half the cost?  Well guess what?  You can!

Today I bought a box of small mason jars and 2 tall 16oz jars of Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts.  I was looking for no salted, but all they had were dry roasted, honey roasted and some other flavor that was spicy.  Dry roasted was fine I guess.

I added 1-16oz jar of peanuts to the food processor and blended the nuts until they were in chunks.  I added 2 tablespoons of peanut oil and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt.  I blended it until it was smooth.  Although, it was very dry and I decided to just add a touch more peanut oil to make it more creamy than it was.  I probably went overboard because it did get creamier, really creamier lol.  Next time I’ll just let it blend until it gets creamy on it’s own.  My partner tasted it and he said it needed more brown sugar, so I added 2 more tablespoons.  It did make a difference.

I like these little jars because if I want to make some peanut butter cookies, 1 whole jar is basically 1 cup, enough to make 1 batch of cookies.  Next time I go to the store I’m going to buy the bottling kit so I can start making my own jams and applesauce.  I could literally go crazy bottling jams and applesauce, but at the same time I know what’s in them so I know that I am eating healthier and saving a ton of money.

My Homemade Pecan Butter Cookies

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Food, RecipesLeave a comment

pecan butter cookies

I have been slaving in the kitchen cracking pecans from our pecan tree so that I could make 2 things, pecan butter and pecan butter cookies.  I had collected almost 16oz of pecans.  It didn’t work out as I had planned, but I made it work, sort of.

I added the pecans to the food processor and just obliterated them until they were like sand, and it literally looked like sand on the beach.  I added the peanut oil and brown sugar and blended it some more, but it wouldn’t get soft like peanut butter.  I left it in there for quite a bit too.  I haven’t used our food processor in ages and it’s as old as our relationship is, if not older (which is going on 19 years if you don’t know).  It was starting to give an electrical smell so I was afraid of overdoing it.

The pecan butter didn’t want to become smooth at all.  I tried adding more peanut oil, but it didn’t seem to make a difference, so instead I just went on with the cookie ingredients.  Since it was enough to make 2 batches of cookies, I added 2 cups of sugar and 2 eggs and blended it until it was like dough and took it out.  I cut half of the dough and put half in the fridge wrapped in Saran Wrap and the other half I cut up into squares that I could roll like into balls to form the cookies.  I didn’t get 36 cookies, some were too big and some were too small.  I wish there were a mold that would cut the dough into 36 squares so I could get even cookie sizes lol.

The cookies came out really sweet, I mean too sweet.  They are good, just really sweet.  I didn’t expect that to happen.  I mean, the peanut butter cookies are sweet, but not that sweet.  Also, the dough was really dark, but the cookies came out a lot lighter.  Oh well.

Pecan cookies are certain not something I would ever try to do again, same with the pecan butter, so this was an experience that I will remember for as long as I live.  The lesson, leave the pecans for pie…

No Flour Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies

On By Michel McDonaldIn Food, HealthLeave a comment

gluten free no flour peanut butter cookies

Did you know you could make peanut butter cookies with just 3 ingredients?  1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg.  That’s it.  My mother taught me how to make homemade peanut butter cookies when I was a teenager, but I don’t even remember what the recipe was, but it did involve a lot of ingredients.  They were really good, but these are better.  And the fact that they are gluten-free is even better.

So here is the recipe.  Combine 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg and mix until it’s like a dough and the peanut butter isn’t sticking to the bowl.  Make 36 balls and smash them with a fork and bake them at 375F for 9 minutes each.  That’s it.  No muss no fuss.  They are 67.9 calories per cookie.

But… if you want them to be healthier, make your own peanut butter.

If you have a food processor (if not a blender would work), add 1 cup of unsalted peanuts and grind it until it’s chunky.  Add 1 tbsp of peanut oil, 1 tbsp of packed brown sugar (or any sweetener that you prefer) and 1 tsp of salt and blend it until it’s as smooth as peanut butter.  Then add 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg and blend it some more until it’s like a dough.  The calories go down to 62 calories per cookie.  That’s not a lot, but it’s something, and at least you know what went into your peanut butter because you made it.

Look at your store bought peanut butter, look at the list of ingredients.  It has high fructose corn syrup and more corn syrup.  That is what you aren’t putting into your peanut butter cookies and that makes it healthy.

Want your cookies to have even less calories?  Replace the peanuts with pecans and your cookies go down to 52 calories per cookie.  I created this recipe for the SparkPeople website for No Flour Pecan Butter Cookies because we have a pecan tree that drops a lot of pecans.  Instead of wasting them, I’m going to make pecan butter and pecan butter cookies out of them.  I’m not sure how they will taste because I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m looking forward to trying it this week.  I will blog about it with a picture.  If it doesn’t work out then I will blog about my failure LOL.

Malt-O-Meal Hot Cereal

On By Michel McDonaldIn FoodLeave a comment

I can remember when I was about 4 or 5 years old and my mother used to make me Malt-O-Meal for breakfast.  That was the best hot cereal ever.  Yes I like Oatmeal but this is better.  I don’t care too much for cream of wheat though.

I remember that my mom always bought the Chocolate Malt-O-Meal and if she bought the original, I would put some chocolate syrup in it to make it chocolaty hehe.

Did you know that Malt-O-Meal hot cereal is nutritious?  I knew it was good for you but I didn’t know to what extend until I read this:

Link is gone, sorry.  But take my word for it lol.  Visit the website and do some digging (link below)

Wow, I’m going to buy this more often and eat it before my bike rides instead of regular cold cereal.  Although this means I’m either going to get a late start or I will have to get up earlier.  Then again you can nuke it lol.

I don’t know why but the stores in California, or at least in Bakersfield, don’t sell the chocolate flavored Malt-O-Meal anymore.  When I was 4 or 5 as I mentioned before we lived here in Bakersfield and that’s where my mom bought it so I’m not sure why they don’t sell it here now.  They do mention that flavor on their website.  I want CHOCOLATE Malt-O-Meal!  Adding chocolate syrup adds more calories to it lol.  Oh well, I guess Maple and Brown Sugar will have to do.

Image copied from their website www.malt-o-meal.com.  Make sure you go to your local grocery store and buy some today.  It’s the best hot cereal ever made IMHO.