Over the past couple of weeks I have been weaning myself off dairy a little bit. Sharon from BigCityVegan.com has been trying her best for me to eat better and although I don’t listen to 90% of what she tells me I did try almond milk a few weeks ago.
I never thought in a million years about changing my coffee drinking or even alter it in any way. I use to have my coffee with milk and 3 sugars. I started reading the book “The Small Change Diet” and took a few steps that were easy and I saw results. I switched my milk up from regular to 2% and then 1% and I didn’t mind that at all. I also started slowing down on sugar from 3 scoops to 2 scoops to 1 scoop.
I saw change to my waistline shrink and although I didn’t mind changing my diet to this it all changed today when I discovered vanilla almond milk. I can hear the coffee experts that drink coffee without anything in it shaking their heads and who cares. This is the way I am enjoying my coffee as I type this. It is all about making yourself happy in life.
This change to almond milk does two things for me. One it gets me off dairy a little bit and that helps my digestion, not that I had problems in that area but getting off dairy a little can’t hurt. It also gets me to cut down on sugar in my coffee. Since I switched to almond milk I find no need to put any sugar in my coffee at all. So lets do some math, I probably have 10 cups of coffee a day and 3 sugars in each equals 30 scoops of sugar that has disappeared from my diet. I can feel the weight coming off every time I have a cup of coffee. The milk is also 1/3rd of the calories of regular milk.
Have you tried almond milk? Have you tried it in your coffee?
I have mentioned I am a coffee fanatic and really only drink water, coffee, ice tea and an occasional glass of wine or two. Yes, my beverage roster is pretty limited.
I use my Cuisinart/Keurig every day (all day) to brew coffee but I also brew iced tea with it and I love it.
On a recent trip to Costco my hubby was mesmerized by a demonstration of the Soda Stream, a machine that lets you make your own soda and carbonated beverages. I don’t drink soda or carbonated beverages, so I wasn’t interested. All I could think is, “Do we really need yet another contraption that makes something specific that I don’t really don’t want and will end up at our next yard sale?” Not really.
But the hubby is highly-susceptible to those damn samples and demos and really thought this was a great idea – maybe because he is a big soda drinker. But, I was also remembering the 50 freezer-burned burritos he had to have from Costco after sampling them. I had to throw about 47 of them out. I was not interested in going down that wasteful path again.
But playing to my personal interests, part of his fast-talking pitch was that there were also several iced tea flavors available from Soda Stream. So after listening to his lengthy pitch (saves money, better for the environment, less recycling of cans and plastic bottles, less lugging of heavy soda up three flights from the store, etc.) and finally making through the huge 25-minute checkout line and to the cashier I pleaded, “Just run and get it if you want it.” I think I just wanted to get out of that overly-crowded warehouse store.
As soon as we got home, the hubby set up his new toy. He made some diet root beer and really enjoyed it. I decided to try some making some peach iced tea that was included in the sample pack of flavors. Honestly, it just wasn’t for me. Maybe it was the carbonation. Maybe it was the syrupy flavor. I like my iced tea with no sugar. But in any case, I haven’t touched that machine since. Although, it seems to be getting a work out from my other half.
So, I’ll just stick with my Cuisinart/Keurig one cup brewer for all my coffee and ice tea needs. Truthfully, it really wasn’t even a fair fight.