Costco UK: Gluten-Free Organic Coconut Flour bulk bag

Nutiva Organic Coconut Flour

Gluten-Free Coconut Flour — Awesome GF Recipe Ingredient, Bargain Price!

If you are looking for great addition to your gluten-free baking ingredients, look no further than your local United Kingdom (UK) Costco right now!  This quite large bag (4#, or 1.81Kg) of Nutiva Organic Coconut flour was £4.99 (roughly $7.50 USD), which is a fantastic deal, and hopefully Costco continues to keep it available.

There are some things to note about baking with coconut flour: this stuff definitely absorbs liquids readily and your recipes will need to take that into account.  But, once you get the proportions right, it is a wonderful ingredient to add to your baked goods — use it in cookies, brownies, breads, pancakes, and so much more.  In moderation, it does not seem to alter the flavor-profile of most items either.  

I even used some of this coconut flour in my homemade hummus as a thickener, though it did impart a slight sweetness (perceived) and a noticeable taste of coconut when I pushed the proportion up a bit much.

Here's what the product at Costco currently looks like:

Nutiva Organic Gluten-Free Coconut Flour at Costco UK

Nutiva Organic Gluten-Free Coconut Flour Nutritional Data

Nutrition: Coconut Flour is high-fiber and protein.

According to the label, this coconut flour is a near "perfect" (nutritionally) ingredient for us Celiac Disease and Gluten-Free diet people: it is very high fiber (nearly 50% fiber by weight) and nearly a quarter protein by weight too!  Seeing how difficult it is to find high-quality sources of fiber for use in our baking, I am quite pleased to have this ingredient as an option.

Bottom line: this product is quite versatile and fun to try out in all sorts of recipes.  I definitely enjoy it in my baked goods and it makes a nice alternative to some other GF ingredients I would otherwise rely on.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Costco: Gluten-Free Honeyville Almond Flour bulk bag

Costco has Gluten-Free Honeyville Blanched Almond Flour

New item at our Costco: 3 pound bags of fine almond flour!

Honeyville brand Blanched Almond Flour (Gluten-Free) 3# bag at Costco

If you have been looking for a very fine almond flour for your gluten-free recipes, check your local Costco store: I just came across this product this week at our Houston, TX location.

The flour has worked nicely in a few recipes I regularly use in my gluten-free diet:

• pancakes:  I used along with finely shredded coconut flour and buckwheat flours and it was quite nice
• yogurt: I often put almond butter in my yogurt along with fruit and berries, so I tried this almond flour instead and rather enjoyed it
• chocolates: I created some quick coconut / almond "haystacks" using shredded coconut and this almond flour, cocoa, coconut-oil, and maple-syrup and found that to also be a tasty treat

This 3 pound bag was $18.99 at our Costco, and 3 pounds is a lot of almond flour!  I hesitated at first when I thought "how am I going to use all this?", but after purchasing it I am fully sure that I will use it quite quickly since I am finding it a versatile gluten-free recipe ingredient for so many things I make.  I think this will be quite nice in cookies and pie crusts and tarts and other things too.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Sugar Free Diet? Sucralose (aka, Splenda®) may still impact your Blood-Sugar and Insulin Levels

Sucralose (aka, Splenda®) / sugar-substitutes may alter blood-sugar response

Sugar-Free Diets using artificial-sweeteners may still impact blood glucose and insulin levels

I was just reading about a new small study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis where study results showed that a popular artificial sweetener (Sucralose, or Splenda® by its common brand name) can modify how the body handles sugar. This is certainly worth further research, as many of us using sugar-alternative for calorie-reduction or an otherwise sugar-free-diet may be making assumptions about the products, and their potential impact on our blood-glucose and/or insulin levels, that may turn out to not be 100% correct.

I think the first thing to mention of note about this study was the size of the study: it was a VERY small study group and involved only 17 persons, and the participants were severely obese.  But, the evidence obtained from it sure looks to alter the conventional wisdom that this sugar-substitute (sucralose) is completely incapable of affecting our blood-sugar and/or insulin levels or response curves.  As quoted from the article I read:

"When study participants drank sucralose, their blood sugar peaked at a higher level than when they drank only water before consuming glucose," [...]. "Insulin levels also rose about 20 percent higher. So the artificial sweetener was related to an enhanced blood insulin and glucose response."

That is indeed of interest.  Like the authors later noted, such response makes one consider the progressive nature of Type-2 diabetes and how when we routinely secrete more insulin, we can become resistant to its effects, thus leading us down the path to type 2 diabetes.  That is a bit scary.  But, I still have to believe products like sucralose are going to slow that march toward Type-2 as compared to ingesting the usual sugars: glucose, sucrose, fructose, etc.

I have used Splenda® in various baked products over the years, and more recently I tend to use stevia-based sweeteners.  And, when it comes to stevia, I personally use a LOT of it in my daily life (generally pure powdered stevia and/or PureVia® brand sweeter), from my morning home-made low-sugar greek-yogurt creations to my no-added-sugar smoothies to many other things.  All of these products are certainly wonderful options for people that want to reduce sugar (and/or carbohydrates in general) in their baked goods or other sweetened foods -- gluten-free or otherwise.  I have some gluten-free recipes where I rely almost entirely on such artificial sweeteners (including my own "low-carb cheesecakes" that I still need to post the recipes for on my library), and I have to believe recipes using these sugar-replacers are still much better at attenuating blood-sugar response when consuming the resulting foods (as compared to if I had used conventional high-sugar sweeteners like white sugar, brown sugar, and so forth).

I would personally like to see larger-scale studies done on sucralose as well as other favored sugar-substitutes like: stevia / Reb-a / rebaudiana, Eryithritol (pretty common in conjunction with stevia - e.g., Truvía® brand sweeter uses this combo), and Xylitol too.  I have done my own research over the years, by way of reading available published scholarly material on stevia and eryithritol, and I currently feel they are most likely going to have little if any affect on blood sugar, but I sure wouldn't mind wide-scale studies that confirm this.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available

Sugar-Free Peppermint Tea from Scratch

Fresh Picked Mint (plant)

Refreshing Homemade Fresh Mint Tea Recipe, No Sugar

Fresh mint sprigs are the key to brewing your own homemade fresh mint tea from scratch. I just picked a handful of tea-mint (shown in picture above) from our yard to make yet another batch of a favorite summer cool-down drink. The temperature has been approaching 90-degrees here the past few days, and I can go through about a gallon of iced mint tea every 2 or 3 days.

After picking the mint, fill a 5 or 6-quart pot with roughly a gallon of water. I first rinse off the mint leaves and sprigs a bit (lately, a requirement since there is so much tree-pollen on everything outside), and then toss them into the pot (the whole sprigs — I don't waste time plucking leaves from the plant sprigs).

I then bring the water and mint to a boil, and allow the mint to remain at a light boil for about 5 minutes, stirring the mint leaves every so often. I do this to release the mint flavor, but also to kill any tiny little bugs or microbes that may be left on the mint after I've rinsed it. Next, I turn off the heat, and allow the mint to steep another 10 minutes. After that, I then remove the sprigs from the water using a strainer-spoon and discard them (this is also why I leave the sprigs intact — removing them from the water is so easy compared to removing a whole bunch of individual leaves).

Xylitol : A sugar-free gluten-free sweetener

While it is still warm, the tea can be sweetened. I have lately been experimenting with sugar-free recipes (in addition to gluten-free recipes), and purchased some Xylitol (bag of it shown below). Xylitol is a sweetener used in things like Trident gum.



The Xylitol is gluten-free (of course, or I wouldn't use it), and the Xylitol dissolves readily in liquids just like sugar. I find it tastes quite similar to sugar also. And, it's always nice to know that when I am drinking so much of this sweetened mint tea, that I am not subject to tooth-decay: in fact, Xylitol has been shown to be a proven cavity fighter! If that wasn't good enough, it has zero net carbs, and is safe for use by diabetics and hypoglycemics (it has a Glycemic Index of only 7 - which is super low).  In a way, you can consider it an alternative to things like Splenda or perhaps even Stevia.

Finally, after my tea is sweetened to my liking, I simply let it cool down to close to room temperature and then funnel it into a gallon water-jug and refrigerate for future use.

I still have not baked any gluten-free desserts with the Xylitol, but I hope to soon. Xylitol can't be used to replace sugar in baked goods that rise using yeast (since, it will not "feed" the yeast properly), and it doesn't crystallize the same as sugar when heated, so you can't make hard candy from it. But, I think it has potential for other desserts where I can substitute part of the sugar. According to the label on the bag, it is recommended that you ramp up your Xylitol consumption gradually over a few weeks for proper (intestinal) tolerance adjustment. And, you can not feed it to your pets, since it can be toxic to them (note: this includes chewing gum sweetened with Xylitol — don't give it to your dog!)

If you have any interest in xylitol, I found mine xylitol online here: World Health Depot (just search for Xylitol, and you'll get a list of items including the granules I pictured above). I get Spry brand chewing gum from this same place (it's Xylitol sweetened too).

So, there you have it. Sugar-free, dairy-free, and gluten-free peppermint tea just in time for summer!
Enjoy.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.