Healthy Hot Chocolate!

Love Hot chocolate?  Me too!  What I didn’t like was all the junk that is added to instant hot chocolate.

For example here are the list of ingredients for Nestle’ Instant Hot Cocoa Mix –

Product Ingredients

SUGAR, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, VEGETABLE OIL (PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COCONUT OR PALM KERNEL AND HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN)**, DAIRY PRODUCT SOLIDS, COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI, AND LESS THAN 2% OF CELLULOSE GUM, NONFAT MILK, SALT, SODIUM CASEINATE, DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE, SODIUM ALUMINOSILICATE, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, GUAR GUM, ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS.

Yum? After reading that list, it makes me want to pass on the cup of cocoa even on a cold day!

Fortunately, there is an EASY & most importantly a HEALTHY Hot Chocolate recipe that even your kids will love.

With No Sugar, No Hydrogenated Oils, and No chemicals you can’t pronounce!

(Yes, it passed my 12 year-old-daughter’s test!) She even said, “It is the best hot chocolate ever!”

So here it is –

• 1 1/2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder with 70% or more cacao.
• 1 packet of Stevia powder (or 1/4 tsp. liquid)
• 1 cup of raw milk  (Click here to learn more about the benefits of raw milk)
• For special times – add a dollop of whip cream (Natural by Nature uses organic cream and only 1 gram of sugar from cane sugar with no hydrogenated oils)

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and heat gently (DO NOT let boil) stirring frequently until cocoa is just beginning to steam.  Pour into a mug and enjoy.

*Heating on low will allow the antioxidants to release from the cocoa and will not destroy all of the beneficial ingredients in the raw milk.

To save time and allow my daughter to make it, I mixed the cocoa and stevia together in a glass jar so when it is time to make it, it is a little quicker and neater.

Enjoy!

www.GreenLifeSaver.net!

Milk … Why Your Kids Don’t Want to Drink it. Are They On to Something?

My daughter would NOT drink milk from about 4 years old until last year at 11.

Did her taste buds change – No, not really.

Before getting into learning about health – I tried to give her regular, pasteurized skim milk. It is said to be healthy for her, but she would not drink it (except to put on her cereal and throw what was left away after eating).

It didn’t really make sense to me since she was not a finicky eater and she ate just about any vegetable I put in front of her and she loved fruit. So why wouldn’t she drink this healthy drink? What was the problem?

Maybe (as most kids do) she instinctively knew what her body needed. What I found after researching milk was that pasteurized, homogenized milk is NOT ‘healthy’ as advertised. Even though some of the stars look kind of cute with the white mustache and the slogan “GOT MILK?”

So what changed at 11 years old that she began drinking it?

I gave her raw milk. One sip, then she finished the glass, then she asked for more!

Where did I get it? At – Sunset View Pastures Farm, an Amish farm in Cochranville, PA. They are located at –

Steve and Katie Stoltzfus
751 Saw Mill Road
Cochranville, PA 19330

610-299-6726

Not only do they have the most amazingly delicious dairy, eggs, and beef products, they are wonderfully friendly and knowledgeable.

How did I find them? Online on www.LocalAmishFarms.com

It is a site dedicated to farms, and farmer markets in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area that offer locally raised, organic and pesticide-free produce, dairy, meats.

I know, if this is new to you, you might be thinking that can’t be safe, or that has to be fattening, if it was so much better for you, than why is there only pasteurized, homogenized milk in the grocery store?

I know, I wondered that as well.

Safety – There are many sites out there that talk about the differences between raw and pasteurized milk. The main consensus is this – raw milk from organic grass fed cows in a cleanly facility is better than pasteurized milk.

Why? Because pasteurized milk is heated which kills all bacteria (the good and bad) leaving it without the digestive enzymes, and nutrients that are the ‘good’ for you part. Here is a blurb from a Dr. Mercola newsletter on raw milk –

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that raw milk can carry disease-causing bacteria, what they completely overlook is the fact that these bacteria are the result of industrial farming practices that lead to diseased animals, which may then in turn produce contaminated milk. You never want to get your raw milk from a feed-lot cow.

Drinking raw milk produced by grass-fed cows from clean, well-run farms, however, is far LESS dangerous than drinking pasteurized milk.

In fact, not only does raw milk contain good bacteria that are essential for a healthy digestive system, raw milk also offers protection against disease-causing bacteria!

The big determining factor about the safety of milk is what the cows are fed and the facility it is produced at. I found this youtube video at another great informative site – www.raw-milk-facts.com.

As nature does in making things with a purpose, raw milk fat actually has multiple purposes – like assisting with the absorption of calcium, and in Dr. Mercola’s newsletter he says that it also assists in the development of muscle and supporting the thyroid.

Check out all three of these sites to learn more about the benefits of raw milk! It really is eye opening … then you can make your assumption on why most groccery stores only offer pasturized milk.

I will continue to drive to the Sunset View Pasture’s Farm to get my milk, eggs, and more.

I can now say that my daughter loves her milk!