Went Grocery Shopping

[colormist]

I bought stuff to make chicken pot pie and the nacho casserole. I don't think I'm going to be able to make the nacho casserole until next week as I made enough pot pie for about 20 people. I'm trying to figure out who I can pawn it off on.

Also found some xylitol gum: Ice Breakers Raspberry Sorbet Ice Cubes. It's not hurting my belly at all! (I think someone wrote about this recently). It was the first time in over a year that I was able to chew gum. The next day my head hurt from all the exercising my jaw muscles were getting.

Picked up the sugar-free Red Vines (strawberry licorice) and it made me sick. Maybe I shouldn't have ate so much of it. Also picked up the Twizzlers sugar-free, but they have sorbitol in them so I donated them to the work-place food stash. (same place I put all the blue pixie stix)

Finally found some steel-cut oatmeal. Bob's Mill or something. It was not anything like regular oatmeal. Super-chewy. It said to cook between 10 and 20 minutes. I cooked for 15 and it was still really chewy. I'd hate to see how chewy it got if I only cooked for 10. It also has a recipe on the side for Oatmeal Scones. It's pretty sugar-free, so I might try it and repost here.

[julienc]

Thanks for all the tips! I'll keep my eyes open for that gum.

I saw a Quaker canister of steel cut oatmeal in the store over the weekend. I didn't buy it, though. It was almost $5 for one little thing! I know, I'm cheap - I'll get one soon just to give it a try. The package said it had to cook 25 to 30 minutes, which is the other problem.

I didn't think of pawning off my blue pixies to coworkers. I need to try that...

[colormist]

Yeah, I found some in a plastic bag for about $3. I figured that was cheap enough to try it. It tastes oat-y, but not really.

[lisa]

Bummer that the Twizzlers had sorbitol. I will have to tell DH to read the label for next time to be sure. When I got them last, they had maltitol, same as the Red Vines. I would imagine that too many of them would make you sick because of the maltitol. I only let Nate eat 2 max.

Trident Splash is pretty good as well. They have SF vanilla mint that is A-OK and also a strawberry kiwi that looked good, but I was nervous to let him try. I can'r remember if it was natural or artificial flavor.

I bought the steel cut oats in a cylinder paper box at TJs from the cereal section. Nate calls it crunchy oatmeal and the kind I have says to cook for thirty minutes The McCann's that they have there in the silver tin is expensive, the other version is not. I want to say under $2? I have also seen it in the bulk bins at a local natural foods store, so maybe there is a similar place over there? Those bulk bins are usually pretty inexpensive. That's where I get my high-gluten flour as well at around 30-35 cents a pound.

[julienc]

lisa said:

Trident Splash is pretty good as well. They have SF vanilla mint that is A-OK and also a strawberry kiwi that looked good, but I was nervous to let him try. I can'r remember if it was natural or artificial flavor.

Lisa, I have been "eating" the strawberry kiwi lately and haven't had a problem. Thanks for the tip on the vanilla mint flavor. I'll keep an eye out for that.

[lisa]

OK, so I got some of the strawberry kiwi gum yesterday and the kid is constantly chewing it. It was tough to get him to spit it out when it got to bedtime. Everytime before when we tried gum, he would take a couple of chews and swallow it. I'm not sure if it is the taste of the gum or just that he's a few months older and finally understands what to do. Crossing my fingers that it really is OK for him. Guess we'll know in a few days.

[julienc]

colormist said:

Also found some xylitol gum: Ice Breakers Raspberry Sorbet Ice Cubes. It's not hurting my belly at all! (I think someone wrote about this recently). It was the first time in over a year that I was able to chew gum. The next day my head hurt from all the exercising my jaw muscles were getting.

MMmmmmm. I finally found the Ice Breakers gum in the spearmint flavor. I love it!! It's much better than the Trident Splash I've been using (which was a bit too fruity for my tastes). I love spearmint! It does list sorbitol in the 2% or less category, but I feel okay so far.

It looks like gum with Xylitol is the new trend, so maybe we'll have a lot more choices in the future.

[colormist]

Okay, I've been buying ice breakers gum like made and chewing it like mad. Yesterday, I didn't eat my afternoon snack. (My entire meal so far had consisted of iced tea, jasmine tea, buttered jasmine rice, purple pixie stix yogurt, and ice breakers gum.) When I was driving home, I had started feeling hungry, then weak, then shaky. So I started going through my diet of the day.

Rewind to a few weeks ago:
I was out to lunch with a friend. After lunch, I offered her some gum. She said it was neat and then queried me on the sugar contents. I said it had xylitol. She asked if it had aspartame. I checked, it did--and it had malitol. I told her I'd have to pay attention when I chewed it to see if I'd have a reaction.

Malitol is also in the red vines, which caused me a reaction when I tried to eat them. I don't know if malitol is in all the gum flavors, but it's definitely in the Peppermint variety.