Agave nectar is officially one of my favorite discoveries ever. I first read about it in Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking. It’s a sweetener in syrup form made from a cactus (the same one that gives us tequila), and it has an extremely low glycemic index—meaning it takes a comparatively long time to get converted into blood sugar. Those with blood sugar problems such as diabetes know this is an extremely useful thing in a sweetener.
I hate artificial sweeteners. They leave a bitter, chemical aftertaste in my mouth that I can’t stand. So, I decided to try agave. There’s some history of type II diabetes in my family and I’m prone to mild blood sugar problems, so it seemed like a good idea. Now I’m completely stuck on it. One of my favorite ‘I’m trying to be healthy’ snacks is a tall drink of plain kefir (a cultured milk drink, basically liquid yogurt) with a tablespoon or two of agave stirred into it. I also used it last night when a coffee ice cream soda drink called for a bit of sweetening; it dissolves in cold liquid much more readily than sugar.
The only problem is, the little 8 oz bottles I can get at the Whole Foods Market cost more than $5 each. Ugh. Not something I want to start using wholesale as a substitute for corn syrup in recipes. Then it occurred to me to go look at Amazon. They sell everything now, right? Right. Any moment now UPS is going to show up with a couple cases of bottles that run much cheaper than the stuff I can get at the store. YAY!
Also today, it seems I got tagged for a meme, so why not. Here we go:
- Write your own six word memoir
- Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
- Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
- Tag five more blogs with links
- And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
It doesn’t make sense as a sentence, but that suits me.
I’ve seen this meme just about everywhere, so instead of tagging specific people, I’m going to do an open tag. If you haven’t played yet and want to, just leave a link to your post in the comments!
Today’s review is of The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to More Not So Useless Facts.
Wow, you got a lot into six little words, great memoir, thanks for playing:)
I *love* agave nectar and I heard about it from the same source. I think Trader Joes may have a slightly better price on it than WF so I’ll check that out. I don’t think I need a gallon of it at a time though! Do you use the light or dark – I’ve never tried the dark and am curious.
Thanks for doing the meme! Your 6-words contain a lot!
Can you use agave nectar as a measure for measure substitute for honey?
bookbabie: Thanks. It’s a tough little game. 🙂
Tara: I managed to find a case of six squeeze bottles (24 oz) of the light and three (18 oz) of the dark at Amazon, so that’s what I ended up getting. Yeah, it’s a lot, but I’m planning on starting in on some serious substitution experiments. 🙂 I’ve only used the light so far; I’m hoping to use the dark in recipes that call for dark corn syrup and maybe brown sugar.
gautami: thanks!
Stefanie: I believe so. You’re supposed to use 25% less when using it in place of sugar because it’s sweeter, but I seem to recall honey’s sweeter too. I’d guess somewhere between 1:1 and 3:4.
I recently noticed a new book coming out that deals with baking with agave – sounds right up your alley!
Hey, thanks for the heads-up, Tara! It’s from Celestial—good folks. I’ve written to one of my contacts there to see if I can snag a review copy.
$5 bucks? that does cost a lot! Why does everything healthy and natural have to costs so much???? (except of course Kefir) Maybe if people started to use agave nectar more and more and increase the demand, the supply will increase to and down the road, hopefully, so does the price tag!
-cushsb