Lola at the Coffee House

Me either. I cut it myself. I let it grow long, cut it, let it grow long, cut it. Sort of a once a year thing. The trick is to have the long be in the winter, but I tend to pre-empt the seasons. At my present length, the day I wash it it comes out fluffycurlypoo and somewhat flyaway, and then settles down to the desultory cap you see in the avatar.
On straightening, I once used some vile straightening potion. Bad move.

Yes. Bed head style was a major advance for women.

Indeed.

Oh, spendius! I always laughed in Art History classes when they showed this slide! Apparently I was the only one who realized he was looking up her skirt.

Dirty minds! Me too!

I'm a docent at an art museum here, and I really had a lot of fun during the training sessions. I'm surprised they let me pass.

I hadn't heard of stevia sweeteners until last week. I tried them because they sounded a healthier option than sugar or saccharin, but they didn't seem to make my tea/coffee sweet enough! Are there different brands available? I've only seen one on sale locally.

Even more - she had kicked off her shoe in giving him the look.

Brahms' German Requiem, with a choir of about 80. Excellent soloists too, professional, and the orchestra is very good for an amateur outfit.
A credit to the town.

There are different brands, but they all contain the same ("E 960").

You know, so-called raw sugar, which is supposed to be better for us, gets the same reaction from me. It just doesn't work well as a sweetener, in my never humble opinion.

Which explains the chemical aftertaste! Thank you. Not sure what to try now!

The most popular brand in our town is Truvia. But the main ingredient is actually erythritol. (Erythritol is a naturally-derived sugar substitute that looks and tastes very much like sugar, yet has almost no calories. It comes in granulated and powdered forms.

Erythritol has been used in Japan since 1990 in candies, chocolate, yogurt, fillings, jellies, jams, beverages, and as a sugar substitute.

Erythritol is classified as a sugar alcohol. Sugar alcohols, also called polyols, are sugar substitutes that are either extracted from plants or manufactured from starches. Some of the more common sugar alcohol sweeteners are sorbitol and xylitol.

Sugar alcohols also occur naturally in plants. Erythritol is found naturally in small amounts in grapes, melons, mushrooms, and fermented foods such as wine, beer, cheese, and soy sauce.). Then stevia, then natural flavors.

I have decided to re-read Pride and Prejudice. Setanta praised it highly not long ago and I thought I would try to see what it was that impressed him so much.

After a few pages my initial reaction, which is of course premature and subject to revision, is that Setanta projects himself into Mr Bingley who is placed in a somewhat propitious circumstance by Miss Austen.

And who wouldn't eh? Know what I mean squire? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

This isn't advice, but what happened with me naturally - I started using less sugar twenty some years ago. It coincided with my first trip to Italy - their cookies et all are markedly less sweet, or sweet tasting, than ours in the U.S., or were last time I was there. But I think that's fanciful, I was probably getting tired of the "too sweet" stuff even before that and hadn't really noticed it. When I got back to Los Angeles, bakery stuff and packaged cookies all seemed gaaah sweet to me.

I like desserts, but don't have them often. When I do bake cookies, I use regular or brown sugar, but something like 60% or 2/3 of what the recipe calls for - not to be be virtuous but to avoid the too sweet taste. So if you want to consume less sugar, maybe gradually tapering the amount of regular sugar down would work, Vonny - don't know.

Twenty, even ten, years ago, I hated whole wheat bread and whole wheat burger buns, refusing to go to an otherwise excellent burger cafe in Hopland, CA because they only used whole wheat buns (what a brat). Turns out that what I didn't like were the commercial whole wheat items and that I actually like "real" multi grain breads, including some grocery store rustic breads, but they tend to be more expensive and most of them probably have as high a glycemic index as white breads. Baking my own bread has had the effect that I eat less ordinary white flour, probably a good thing health wise, but done for the sake of taste and texture. Plus I get to play around with different flours, adding whole grains that have a better glycemic index and taste good to me now.

I've a bias against a bunch of grocery products, the chems involved with the packaging, but don't know, re stevia and truvia. I do know you can find the stevia plant at Home Depot here, so you can grow your own.

On the other hand, I'm a fool for packaged saag paneer (a spinach/cheese concoction, Indian dish.) The packages have way too much salt and I love them anyway.

I drink coffee a lot and tea way less often. I can do fine sans sugar in tea, but like a half teaspoon in a cup of coffee. (Now there the italians are off the charts to me, loading their espressos with sugar but I need some in espresso too).


Saag paneer! Maybe Wassau can bring me some of the real thing for lunch.

Well, it's more natural than "artificial sweeteners" since it's steviol glycoside, made from plants. (Ever seen how sugar is made from the sugar beets??? Brown sugar is E 150, btw)

(The "E-classification" has only little to do with chemistry but is just a list of codes for food additives.)

Thanks for such an informative post!

My aim in searching for a good sugar substitute is really for health reasons. I don't have a sweet tooth, except in beverages. I drink a lot of chai or green tea nowadays, but need to have it sweetened to make it palatable.

Since I was disabled I don't - and can't - get into the kitchen much, so have to rely on shop bought breads. But I do buy organic where possible, and have grown to like wholemeal, multi-seeded, wherever possible.

stevia IS a simple sugar . It just has a oxygen based bond that is easily broken on hydration , leaving the simple sugar (usually just one fructose). It has an after taste due to the associate bonded chemical .
it wont cause any effects except some stuidies are saying there is a mutagenic effect from the associate chemical bond.

WHO KNOWS?

There are few sweeteners available I can use. Truvia tastes delicious with no aftertaste and is usually pretty much sold out when I look for some in the local HEB. Since we don't actually use much, we decided to chance it with this product. On a side note, milk producers are trying to obtain permission to put aspartame in milk to make the public addicted as a means to boost sagging sales.

That's what they do with water when they put alcohol in it, ed. I like "sagging" in relation to the subject of milk.

You should try some water 'plain' once in a while, spendi.