Thursday, April 1, 2010

Chocolate Syrup- and Healthy Food

If you've been reading long enough, you'd know that I strive to feed my family healthy, nutritious food. At the same time, you may also have noticed that my recipes often contain white sugar and white flour. This incongruity may seem absurd to you, that I claim to eat healthy foods, yet feed my family white sugar and white flour, which everyone knows is bad for you.
Why would I be feeding my family something that is less than nutritious?
Simple. There is only so far I can stretch my money, and there isn't much to be had.
Not too long ago, I stocked up on whole wheat flour and incorporated that into my family's diet instead of our usual white flour. I did this because I was able to buy that whole wheat flour for only 30% more than the price I pay for white flour, as opposed to the103% more that whole wheat flour usually costs. From these staggering numbers, I am sure you can understand why I have not switched completely to whole wheat flour. Brown sugar also costs approximately the same amount more than white sugar does, and that sugar is pretty much white sugar with added molasses (and in fact, that is how they make it). Because I don't really believe brown sugar is that much healthier than white, I don't see the point in paying twice my usual price for this not-even-really-healthy sweetener. More naturally found sweeteners like sucanat and honey are even more expensive, and unfortunately, completely out of my budget and kitchen, aside for some rare occasions.
But, especially as someone with a tendency for low blood sugar, I can't go completely without sweeteners in my life, so I use fruit for sweeteners while I can, and the rest of the time use white sugar.

But I don't eat completely unhealthily. Because I need to allocate my dollars to the most important things, I spend my money on having a well balanced diet, with many fruits, vegetables, and as many whole grains as I can.
The one common theme you will notice among my recipes is that I try to make sure that all the food that I ingest is chemical free. For no matter how bad white sugar and white flour may be for you, I am much more convinced that any artificially contrived chemical is immensely more detrimental for your body, and in fact, my own body sends me that message when I try to cheat. By making all my food from scratch, I am able to know exactly what it is that I'm ingesting, and know that there are no hidden surprise ingredients that I would want to keep far from my digestive system.

That said, here is my recipe for homemade chocolate syrup. Yes, it has sugar, but no, it has no chemicals in it, no artificial flavorings, colorings, preservatives or sweeteners. Healthier than store bought, that is for certain.

What is your thoughts on white sugar, artificial sweeteners, and expensive healthier sweeteners? Would you avoid sweeteners entirely if the healthier sweeteners were out of your budget, or would you do as I do?



Homemade Chocolate Syrup

Ingredients:
1 cup cocoa powder
2 cups white sugar
1 cup water
1/4 tsp salt

Mix all these ingredients in a saucepan.
Bring to a boil, stirring the whole time.
When all the sugar is dissolved, turn off the flame.
Let it cool down.

That's it! It tastes much better than Hershey's chocolate syrup. Completely chemical free. So easy to make, and with such simple ingredients. Absolutely delicious served on ice cream, in milk, drizzled on cake, or however you like your chocolate syrup.

1 comment:

  1. I found this old post of yours but now see you have cut sugar out of your family's diet, what/how would you substitue for the sugar?

    ReplyDelete

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