Alrighty, I’m going to do something I said I would never do… review a hoodia product. lol.

First of all, when the Ice Cube Diet people wanted to send me their product to try, I gave them fair warning. I told them that we make fun of scammy spammy diet pills and nonsense here. But, they insisted! They stand behind their product enough that they thought they could win over the peanut gallery here at The Fun House. lol.

So they sent me the product, and I have to say I’m surprised… this isn’t a “lose weight fast hoodia melts fat blah blah blah” pill; it’s REAL RAW HOODIA, not dried, and not in pill form. It’s frozen ice cubes of hoodia juice mixed with a little lemon juice to mitigate the “yuk” taste of the hoodia. Sucking on these cubes seems to be the most effective way to use them.

Before my review of how these worked for me, let’s start with some hoodia facts:

1. MOST hoodia diet pills are complete garbage and contain little or no P57 (the chemical that curbs appetite.

2. Hoodia, in order to receive the full benefits like the San Bushmen in Africa that use it for their hunting trips, it really needs to be consumed fresh and raw.

3.  Hoodia is actually a FOOD for the Bushmen, not a “supplement” like how we think here in the West.

4. Hoodia is bitter and really kinda tastes like crap. I’ve had slices from a live hoodia succulent, the real thing, and I can tell you that it tastes awful; but you will get used to the taste the more you chew it.

5. Real hoodia is not for American sissies. It’s not a pleasant taste. It’s like one of those “eat your brussles sprouts” moments with your kids. It is effective and killing the appetite, for sure, no doubt… but can you do what the Bushmen do and suck and chew on it to get the same benefits they get?  If not, don’t waste your time on hoodia pills or product formats that are more “pleasant” for Americans. Man-up or forget it.

The Desert Labs people that make the Hoodia Ice Cube product with lemon juice. It still tastes like hoodia, but with lemon, which makes it a bit more pleasant than plain, raw slices of hoodia.  Personally, I found the hoodia juice cubes they sent me to be quite refreshing in the hot summer! I like the little burst of energy they give along with the appetite reduction.

Sometimes more than one cube was necessary and there seemed to be a cumulative effect over the period of sucking on the cubes for a couple of days. And some days I felt less hungry than others. Your mileage may vary… YES this is a REAL fresh plant hoodia product in a convenient ice cube form with a little lemon. It may or may not have the same effect everyday. But for sure, it’s the real thing and the people at this company grow their own hoodia and have made a nice business out of supplying the market with a REAL, fresh hoodia product and not a scammy “diet pill.”

If you’ve never tried hoodia, the real stuff, it’s not a waste of money.  Buy a plant and chew it, or you can buy the convenient ice cube form from these nice folks.  There is no other way to use hoodia correctly to get the true benefits other than the fresh plant form.

I LOVE my Jack’s Dehydrator! It’s still going strong making the best Essene breads ever. What can I say? It’s been a workhorse.  You do need to keep an eye on the bottom drawer because things can heat up down there and get brown spots, rendering it “cooked” more than raw. However, as I mentioned when I first wrote about the dehydrator, temperature control can be achieved  by pulling out the drawers; and of course, always run your Jack’s in a room with good air circulation.

Jack’s is made entirely of aluminum and has mesh, stainless steel screens. For those of us, like myself, that aren’t crazy about foods in plastic or aluminum, parchment paper is an excellent choice to use with it. Most of the things I make are done on parchment paper. I also use the stainless steel screens they provide when drying whole food slices on the trays.

Jack’s with parchment baking paper makes excellent raw cuisine, EXCELLENT. So if you are making breads, pizza, rolls, etc, you can’t go wrong and the food comes out perfect in my experience! Hope this was helpful.

So what is the Berry Blast Drink by Focus 28 anyhow? Well, it’s a sugar-free, whey protein drink; and just like it says, it’s berry flavored.

Now, normally, this might be something I poo-poo as “not much different from “Crystal Lite” in terms of taste. While it is along those lines in terms of taste, one thing it does in an absolutely fabulous way is lend itself to the addition of fruit and sparkling mineral water for a refreshing protein meal with fizz!

This is a great idea for the bariatrics as well as the rest of us that might want a delish, super-fast, protein pick-me-up without a lot of calories.

I like to call this drink, Hot August Strawberry! Here is the simple recipe, it is less than 3 minutes to prepare.

What you will need:

A blender

1 envelope of Focus 28 Berry Blast Drink

1 cup frozen strawberries

1/2 cup crushed ice

1 1/2 cups VERY COLD sparkling mineral water

fresh strawberry for garnish

Prepare:

Put ice, sparkling water,  frozen strawberries in blender and blend until smooth and icy.

Garnish with a fresh strawberry or other berries , Enjoy!

So let’s get this party started:

There is a nice haul of gorgeous roma tomatoes in northern California right now at one of my favorite stores, The Grocery Outlet.  These are nicer than the romas I’ve seen at Whole Foods and are only 4 for $1 !!!  They dry up nicely in the dehydrator and work great in any raw recipe calling for tomato.  In raw recipes, these have given the most “cooked” flavor of any of the others I’ve picked up anywhere. Ok, they aren’t organic, but heck, I like to save money and have great produce; wash your tomatoes well, is my advice.

Isn’t the color amazing?

Warning: It’s very different than the cooked golden stuff you squeeze from a plastic bear. This is NOT for babies or young children. This is totally RAW HONEY.

This is such an amazing food, I don’t know where to start. And it really is a “food” as much as a “sweetener.”  It’s straight from the hives and does not have the nutrition filtered or cooked out.  It doesn’t “pour,” so you will have to scoop it out with a spoon; it has the consistency of peanut butter.

Do not, I repeat, do not, heat or warm it to make it easy to pour, that will kill all of the delicate enzymes and other microbiological goodies in it. This is a great food by the spoonful on fasting days or “cleansing” days.

This is NOT a spam, I swear. I have been buying the nutritional and raw foods from the health food store for ages, this brand, as a matter of fact. Imagine my pleasant surprise to find out they offer affiliate sponsorships for health websites!

My favorite health foods that I’ve raved about on here many times, raw cocoa, super food greens, agave, hemp protein.. this is where I get this stuff. No matter where you live here in the states, you can have this kind of quality health foods delivered to your door because you can order online even if you do not have a local health food market in your area! And yeah, I’m an affiliate that gets paid when you buy; but I hope I’ve earned some credibility on these products as I’ve included them in many previous posts, sans the brand name.

These foods, along with another shake (not a product of Sunfoods) have been sustaining my success at sticking with my diet program. This is not a “gimmicky” “lose weight fast” spam site, they are a very trustworthy and reliable company that distributes in natural grocery markets. These are grocery foods, not BS pills filled with sawdust. I am proud to have them sponsoring my site through their affiliate program.

But like the weight loss thing, with quitting smoking I never gave up. I’ve quit more times than I can remember with every method that is out there. Well, instead of joining the “it’s the smoker’s right to enjoy cigs and kill themselves” advocacy group (yep, there are advocacy groups for people to keep smoking just like there are the fat acceptance groups); I found this little place on the web. If you are interested, go to their “Titan 510″ product (which, as an ex-smoker I find the most satisfying in terms of vapor output and realism). These really aren’t ment to be “quit smoking” devices, but rather a new generation of “cigarettes.” No smoke, no complaining about the second hand smell and toxins from non-smokers, and did I mention NO SMOKE?? Nope, just water vapor. The whole thing works on the same principle as a disco fog machine. These are completely tobacco free, and if you like, they can be nicotine free as well so that you can just enjoy the nice flavors they offer without nicotine.

I, of course, love my nicotine. I love my nicotine and caffeine. That hot cuppa with a nice full e-cig cartridge, blowing around water vapor everywhere in the morn, wow, talk about a satisfying way to greet the day. I’m an adult, why should I not be able to enjoy both of these perfectly natural substances? The doctor says there isn’t much harm in just using nicotine. Plus, I have to tell you, nicotine without the burning smoke that contains 4000 other chemicals, nicotine by itself, in my opinion, in my experience, is not even half as addicting as when it is paired up with the burning smoke. Seriously. My nicotine use is way down from when I was smoking and the truth is, I haven’t even made an attempt to reduce nicotine, it just happened naturally when I stopped smoking real cigs.

Believe it or not, these e-cig thingies were so easy to switch to. When I think of all the other times I quit smoking and what kind of living hell it was to stop; switching to an e-cig was so easy I’m surprised some moral nanny hasn’t tried to ban it yet.

Life is so good not being a slave to the tobacco companies and their B.S. product that is nothing but a slow suicide device.  I can breathe! I can move! And I can still enjoy, and I mean ENJOY, puffing and blowing “smoke rings” and everything else we smokers love to do, without a death sentence and without other people complaining about us.

Nowadays pomegranates are grown in California and you don’t have to wait until the fall to enjoy this amazing fruit and its delicious, tart juice! Pomegranate juice makes a great low-cal beverage for lunch or an elegant beverage for dinner.

Pom Wonderful!

There are so many ways to enjoy pomegranates and their juice, I could write an entire novel. But I’ll just stick to mentioning my favorite here, since I love to incorporate the nutritional benefits of pomegranates into my diet regime.  And Pom Wonderful is probably the most convenient way to do this.

8 ounces of pomegranate juice have 150 calories. The thing about pomegranate juice is that it’s got a very highly concentrated flavor, a little can go a long way. Try this amazing low-cal fizzy drink recipe instead of diet sodas with fake sugar or full sugar soda:

Pom Wonderful POP! (37 calories for 10 ounces)

2 ounces of Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice

8 ounces of fizzy mineral water or club soda

a slice of lemon (optional)

ENJOY!!!!!

But I’m such a priss about it. I like FRESH sliced lemons in my water.  The little packages of preserved lemon juices skeeve me out. It all tastes like plastic to me. Although the packaging is supposed to be “food safe” plastics, side by side, I can taste the difference between lemon juice from the lemon and the lemon juice that has been sitting around in plastic for a while. How can that plastic not be leeching into the lemon juice, especially since it is so acidic? I say, if you can taste plastic, you are ingesting plastic.

Check this lemon juice out:

I tried True Lemon this week and was really surprised how fresh it tasted! This is a crystallized lemon juice concentrate, not a liquid packaged in plastic. Wow and was it delicious in water! It’s good with cut fresh lemons as well, it really boosts the flavor. By itself, it make an excellent addition to water, I really could not tell the difference between the cut lemons and the True Lemon. Fantastic.

Haha. Now that I’ve sold you on how great this is, you want a free sample too, don’t you?  True Lemon is giving away free samples galore of their entire line of crystallized citrus juices, lemon, lime and orange. Their also giving away free samples of their lemonade product, Naturally Sweet.

Naturally Sweet is some heavy duty competition for Crystal Light!!! I’ve never liked Crystal Light. I hate fake sugar. I’d rather have a tart drink than one with fake sugar. I don’t include fake sugar in my diet plan at all. I was mildly surprised at the Naturally Sweet being as good as it is. It’s 5 calories for a packet mixed with 12 oz of water. They use a combo of cane juice and a natural stevia sweetener to sweeten this lemonade. The “mouth feel” is definitely superior to Crystal Light, and so is the flavor. There is still a bit of that stevia “aftertaste,” so I would not say that this low calorie lemonade is perfectly aftertaste free, nothing that uses sugar substitutes is. But, they far outdo their competition in this area, and it’s definitely one low calorie drink mix that doesn’t make me grit my teeth.

]]> http://www.msfatty.com/true-lemon-to-rock-your-world-people/feed/ 2 http://www.msfatty.com/cocoa-nibs-food-of-the-gods/ http://www.msfatty.com/cocoa-nibs-food-of-the-gods/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:18:19 +0000 Ms. Fatty Cake http://www.msfatty.com/?p=168 Literally. Cocoa is/was food of the gods, royalty and now… FATTIES!!!!!!!!!!

Did you just get that? I said chocolate is the food of fatties! The food of fatties trying to lose it. And let me tell you what a wonderful tool these crunchy little nibbers are at keeping you on the straight and narrow:

If the only chocolate you’ve ever experienced comes mixed up with a bunch of sugar and fat, you are missing out!

This is real cacao bean, raw, fresh from the mighty chocolate trees. It’s nothing but the bean. And it has the most satisfying “chocolate punch” that works a wonder on the sweet tooth. Now, since this is the raw bean, it’s not sweet. Don’t expect sweet. The way I like to eat these is a couple of tablespoons of the nibs with a teaspooon of organic sugar in a small cup with a little silver spoon. They make an amazing coffee companion and satisfy me like nothing else can. The other think I like to add to these is a few drops of vanilla extract, which really makes the chocolate “BURST.” These beans are very low in calories and fat… before you give into that plate of brownies, pull this out of the cabinet and try them with my little recipe, or if you want, just eat them plain! I like a very slight sweet edge with these, personally, hence the teaspoon of sugar. But if you are diabetic or otherwise not eating sugars, they are good with a little powdered stevia and vanilla extract too! This way they are totally great for diabetics.