Dried Fruit to Get Rid of Chocolate Cravings

I have a lot of posts devoted to chocolate substitutes. But sometimes they just don't cut it. And then you have that piece of dark/milk/white chocolate that you are craving so badly. And you allow yourself 'x' many pieces. Which is totally fine by the way. That should end your cravings right? You had what you wanted right? Alas, the world is not a fair place and rarely does only a little bit of something as good as chocolate satisfy us. I believe this is part of the great punishment bestowed upon Adam and Eve back in the garden of Eden..... Anyway, I randomly found a cool fix to this unending chocolate craving. It gets rid of the chocolate aftertaste in your mouth. Of course you could just brush your teeth, but that does look kinda weird in public haha

After you eat your chocolate, have a piece of dried fruit. I find that granny smith dried apple rings work wonderfully at making the idea of eating more chocolate absoluelt repungent. And it only takes one to work. (I think they are about 10 calories each- feel free to correct me). Dried Apricots also work well- I actually just had some to get rid of the dark chocolate taste in my mouth! The sugary taste completely distracts the taste buds and allows the mind to forget about ever wanting more chocolate (well, most of the time!) Prunes/ dried plums don't really work that well and I haven't tried any other dried fruit, but I would imagine raisins would NOT work well (trail mix anyone- raisins are always paired WITH chocolate!)

Of course, gum is always another option, but you know, I'd be boring if I wrote a post about that. So this is my creative solution. Try it and let me know if it works.

Crunchy Tuna Salad with Fiber One

In my opinion, tuna salad was made to crunch. My mom always prepared it with mayo and tons (I mean tons!) of chopped celery and onions on a sesame roll. Besides from the resulting bad breath it was great. Now out of the comforts of my childhood innocence about how many calories that sandwich contained, I've omitted the mayo and the roll, and I prefer my tuna in salads as opposed to 'tuna salad'. (To clarify, I mix tuna in a salad of mixed greens, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc). But much to my dismay, I am a horrible celery chopper. Maybe that trait skips a generation? It takes me forever, and the pieces are either too big or are too measley to add significant crunch. When I take the time and make a tuna salad for dinner I take the time to struggle through my disability (haha) but more often than not I am faced with two problems: 1. who has time all that often? 2. And many times I make the salad ahead of time, bring it to work for lunch, and add the tuna there from one of those handy dandy no-fridge-necessary packets- you can't chop celery there (it would take up my whole lunch break!) and even if you have celery in the actual salad, it doesn't really take to mixing with the tuna all that well.

Many times I sucked it up and somewhat unhappily ate my unsatisfying mushy salad (you know tuna with greens and tomatoes etc. Well, I'm sort of lying, crunchy vegs are in there such as broccoli and peppers, but it in no way makes the overall salad crunchy.) When foods don't have a certain crunch factor, I don't feel like I've eaten as much and don't feel full.

And then one day I had brought fiber one for a snack, and I decided to mix in the fiber one with my salad when I added the tuna. WOAH MAMA my problems were solved! I added 1/2 c fiber one (it was a large salad haha) and it added crunch to every bite! Plus, it added an very interesting taste that in my opinion makes the tuna taste slightly less overpowering allowing it to complement the taste of the vegetables better. The extra boost of fiber also keeps me fuller longer. And the best, best part of all is that it solves all of my problems! It's quick and easy, I can easily add it to salads at work, and I can repress the fact that I will never be able to chop celery. Since the fiber one is easily transportable in a little baggie college students can even bring it with them down to the dining hall and add it to a salad made there.

I usually only add 1/4 c of fiber one (30 calories, 7 g of fiber) for every 3 oz or so of tuna and you can either mix it all in the beginning or what I like to do is mix in half at the beginning and then half a little bit later in the eating process. It's important to add it right before eating otherwise, like most carb things, will get soggy. For all those vegans, people who don't like tuna, etc., do not fret: you can use fiber one to top any salad! Hope this makes some of you a delicious salad!

Hot Chocolate Update

A new discovery: if you add 1/2 pck of splenda to the previously mentioned Diet Hot Chocolate packet, it brings out the chocolate taste. A conundrum I know, as it seems weird that sugar would make it more chocolatey, but alas it does. The only slight disadvantage to this is that along with more chocolate, you also get more aftertaste. And it's not a good one. With the splenda it tastes, well, like artificial flavoring. So personally, I would opt for the packet of hot chocolate as it is even with it's slightly less chocolate taste because then afterwards I feel like I had chocolate, not chemicals, but I figured I'd share this little taste-bud adventure with you and let you make your own judgements!

Chocolate Yogurt

Speaking of chocolate cravings I figured I post another use for cocoa powder- making your own chocolate yogurt. Stonyfield makes a Chococlate Underground flavor for 170 calories and something like 34 g of sugar. In my opinion, that's a lot of sugar. Plus stonyfield isn't always that um friendly on the wallet. I had just bought Unsweetened Cocao Powder from Trader Joe's and was eager to experiment with it. For 3 tbsps it's 110 cal, 7g of protein, 3 g of fat, and this is from memory but I think it had only 2 g of sugar.

Well, the first creation was my very own chocolate yogurt! I used a plain non-fat yogurt (80 cal), 2 splenda, and 1/2 tbsp of cocoa. That makes the total approx 100 calories. Let me just say that the cocoa powder worked well! It was really chocolate tasting. At first I didn't mix it well enough (see right- you can see the specks of cocoa) and it didn't exactly look all that appetizing ... but then I moved it to a bowl and mixed it better (see below)



It wasn't as thick as the stonyfield yogurt, but I suppose you could use greek yogurt for a very thick consistancy, or even a 1 or 2 % yogurt. But I thought this was a great substitute for the high sugar (and higher cal) chocolate yogurts that are in the market. It had a rich chocolate taste- was very real tasting, meaning you could tell it wasn't artificial. And it wasn't very sweet. If this isn't sweet enough for you, the powder tastes awesome with ff vanilla yogurt! Back to the plain yog version, I would have to say it tastes like a natural snack... like for some of these other creations you could give to anyone and they wouldn't expect it was healthy or diet or whatever, but this tastes like a dieter version of chcolate yogurt. In sum, I think it is quite tasty but you have to know not to expect some very rich decadent treat- it tastes like just like yogurt that is chocolate.

I plan on trying it with more cocoa (1 tbsp) to see how that tastes. Perhaps that will make it richer tasting. I'll keep you updated!



(And as an added bonus: you can then freeze this chocolate yogurt for a cold chocolate "fro-yo"!)