Coffee, Chicory, and Bulletproof Recipe

Unless you are into Intermittent Fasting, Keto, Paleo, or any eating regimen included Bulletproof Coffee, you might want to skip this post. But if you are curious about chicory, you might want to hang around.

First, let talk Bullet Proof Coffee:

I am curious what any of the rest of you think of using MCT oil in your coffee? I've posted about my experience with it, but I don't know if everyone feels it makes a difference in their diet.  The kind I am using is great but... that price tag is a little scary.

For now, I am still using the MCT (because I have some left) in my BPC and I have gotten back into using chicory also. I don't know that I will be re-purchasing the oil again anytime soon.

This is my recipe for Morning B.P. Coffee:

• 3 tablespoons dark roast coffee (had to order Yuban it online, but it's worth it) brewed with 2.5 cups of water (because I like my coffee strong). Recently, I'm adding chicory but I'll get to that later.
• 1 tablespoon of coconut oil. I keep a small amount in a sealed container on the counter so that it's softened for use.
• 1 Tablespoon of MCT oil
• About 2.5 tablespoons of heavy whipping cream
• Either 2 packets of Monkfruit Golden or 1.5 tablespoons of Monkfruit Classic White
• Sometimes, I use a couple tablespoons of coconut milk or coconut cream.

After I add everything to the coffee, I hit it with the stick blender until it's a little frothy. I happen to have an excellent thermos-type mug that keeps my coffee hot for hours. Thanks to my niece for sending such a useful Mother's Day gift.

It's a "Kanteen" and
you can get one with other wraps

I usually go through 2 mugs of my coffee in a  day. If I'm sick from my meds, I will even do 3 because the ingredients make up for the food I don't eat those couple of days. It's a really filling, satisfying drink. Adding the coconut milk or cream is perfect when I need something extra in my stomach.

Now, this is the golden variety of the monk fruit sweetener that I have fallen in love with:

I guess it's supposed to mimic brown sugar the way the white variety mimics table sugar. It does have a somewhat richer flavor but it's not anything like actual brown sugar. I love me some brown sugar in my coffee, but this will have to do for now.

There are benefits to black coffee that you can look up online. Chicory root also has benefits you might not have heard of - and I am not saying that these are proven benefits, but just things I have heard of from others including my family that chicory might have an effect on:

• Lowering blood sugar
• As a laxative (my mother told me about this years ago)
• To help increase or decrease appetite.
• To help lower blood pressure
• As a caffeine-free substitute for coffee

When I was young, my mother made chicory root tea to help ease my constipation but I didn't like the taste to drink enough of the tea. As an adult, I can say that, if I ingest enough chicory, I get mild laxative benefits. (By the way, I have heard of chicory root being used as a sweetener.)

I used to get chicory from the health food bulk bins at Carrs Safeway in Anchorage and loved the smell and taste when added to coffee. I ran out of the last of my very old supply and ordered this from Amazon. I was not pleased. The product smelled and tasted rank and stale.

There are quite a few coffees that have chicory added- or even java substitutes that made solely of chicory. I prefer just adding chicory to my own choice of coffees. Thanks to social media photos I have taken and captioned with a mention of chicory, I have been offered a couple of chicory coffees to try.

This is French Market Chicory Coffee. It is very reasonably priced. This one is about $5 for a 12-ounce can at Walmart (but is not available at my local Walmart so it has to be ordered from their online store). I will be doing a full review later, but this is what the coffee looks like:

 I expected the chicory to have that nice, dark color (along with the scent of coffee, but this is what I got:

As you can see, the color is not very deep. The smell is very stale and unpleasant. There was zero coffee-scent to it. I will not be using the brand again. The brand I used in Anchorage was as dark as the French Market coffee.

So, obviously, there are some things to consider when choosing a chicory:

• It should be organic and fresh (read lots of reviews)
• Origin should be USA (because I think there are flavor variations by country of origin)
• Use a seller who offers a freshness or other satisfaction guarantee

Anyway, I would love to hear about anyone else using BPC and/or chicory. Do you have a special recipe and do you feel that it helps you in any way? Also, if you know of a good brand of chicory root (fresh and affordable), do let me know.

Peace
--Free

**REVIEW** Monk Fruit Sweetener

A couple of years ago, when I was actually attempting to do Keto, I did a blog post about the different types of sugar substitutes. It's a great post so go and check it out, but as you know, Keto has gone buh-bye for me. I now do intermittent fasting and just attempt to eat low-carb.

One of the serious issues I have cutting out carbs is not bread or preservatives or any of the common carb bombs. My problem has to do with my coffee. Lately, I have gotten better at sipping black coffee during my fasting hours. I'm still working on tea... Now, it looks like I don't have to give up sweetening my coffee. And it's because of these sugar substitutes right here:

Both brands look the same to me

Those are the 2 brands of mong fruit sweetener I am trying. Don't they look a lot like regular table sugar?

Of course, like with any other trend, everyone in the game and their mama has jumped on the wagon. There are so many brands and types of monk fruit out there that I got dizzy trying to read reviews on them all. That's why I finally just chose the 2 brands to test out.

One is from Health Garden (via Walmart) and the other is Lakanto brand (via Amazon but can be found everywhere).

The Health Garden brand on the left is in 6-gram packets (nice for tucking into my purse), and the Lakanto on the right is a loose form.

Again, looking at the nutrition labels, Health Garden is on the left:

 Before a couple of weeks ago, I had never even heard of monk fruit. If I had, I'd forgotten all about it. Now I'm really glad I tried it.

Let me go over what I consider to be the Pros:

• Taste, taste, taste - or, rather, no aftertaste. I literally ate some of both these brands right off a spoon. I wanted to know if I'd get that metallic 'bite' that I do with most sugar substitutes. Nope. Not one tiny taste of nastiness. Remember that I did try Erythritol by itself and I did get that aftertaste. With the other fakes that were tolerable, after this one, they just don't live up to the hype anymore.
• The cost, while much higher than regular table sugar, is right up there with other substitutes. Also, because this is a health issue, I'm not going to cry about paying around $0.50/oz for the loose sweetener. I was paying $0.11/oz for Sugar in the Raw - which was not helping my fasting.
• The packets are more convenient, but the loose sweetener is the most economical. Now that I see there is no difference in taste, I know which type to order.
• You can do everything with this substitute that you can with table sugar - or so I've heard. I don't usually cook with sugar and will probably just stick to using this for my beverages (more on that in a moment).
• This is a 0 on the Glycemic Index, which I learned more about here. That's going to be important for when I am fasting.

I can't help but come back to the taste being what sells me on this. When I talk about being able to use this in beverages, you don't know what a game-changer it is. I've been wanting to do a liquid fast again. Last time, I did okay but I got really tired of just water and plain coffee and green tea. I looked up some information and it looks as if I will be able to fast and have this sweetener in my beverages. That means... I can add lemonade to the mix. Yay. Lemon water is supposed to be all kinds of good for the body but I could never do it without a little sweetening.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know about this sugar substitute.

Peace

--Free

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