Sweet Ginger Chili Sauce by the Ginger People

This is a truly delicious sweet ginger chili sauce. It is has a great balance of sweet and spiciness and I just love how the ginger flavor comes through. It tastes like fresh ginger!

What I also like is the ingredients (see below), very simple yet very effective. The cornstarch is used to thicken the sauce. I would not have minded if they would have used xanthan gum instead of the cornstarch. Cornstarch masks flavors more than xanthan gum, but as is, it is a delicious flavorful sauces. And I like it that it has no preservatives such as benzoates or sorbates, but uses a vinegar to bring down the pH and act as a preservative.

It is great as a dipping sauce with crispy spring rolls and pot stickers, but goes also very with meats and seafood.

Ingredients: cane sugar, water, distilled white vinegar, roasted red pepper puree, dehydrated garlic, ginger puree, sweet ginger pulp, crushed chilies, cornstarch.

Trader Joe's High Fiber Fruit & Nut Multigrain Medley

One of the things I didn't eat growing  up is cereal or granola for breakfast. (Most) Dutch people eat bread in the morning. The moment to eat granola would be after dinner as a dessert added to yogurt. But of course, I have tried cereals and granola for breakfast here in the United States, but never found one that was really tasty and still reasonable healthy. Because if you find one that is tasty, after reading the sugar and fat content on the label, it makes you think that you are better off eating a bar of chocolate (although the chocolate probably does not score high for fiber content).However, cereal is convenient to have in the pantry, for when there is no bread, or as a snack (especially when you have children).

Luckily, Trader Joe's managed to make a cereal that is low in fat, low in sodium, not too sweet, high in fiber (7 grams per serving, which is more then 25% of the recommended daily intake), and best of all, very tasty. It has a great crunch. I enjoy it just as is without yogurt or milk.

The picture on the box shows a lot of cranberries, raisins and nuts (nicely staged), but there never seems to be too many of those in the box. Not that I really mind, but my daughter, always asks for more raisins. But even kids (at least mine) like this cereal. And it beats the sugar-coated, artificial-color-infused cereals that are marketed towards them.

Even when I crave a crispy cookie, this cereal can satisfy that craving too (not always..., but if there is no cookie around it definetly does) so it makes a pretty good snack.

The only thing that puzzles me a bit, is the listing of 'iron' in the ingredients lists (see below). Because, I assume, they did not add just a tiny pieces of metal to it, but some kind of iron salt, so why not list exactly what it is? The type of iron in a cereal typically is a nonheme iron, which is iron from a plant source. It has a lower absorption in the body than a heme iron, which is animal derived. However, It could be an iron oxide as they are allowed in cereal, but technically, they should be used for color coating and not for iron fortification (and this cereal does not look like a specific color is added either). Or maybe it would be something like ferrous sulfate, ferrous gluconate, ferrous lactate or ferrous carbonate. My personal preference would be something like ferrous lactate or gluconate as it is absorbed much easier by the human body (better bioavailability) then the iron oxide and therefore actually might contribute to my iron consumption. 

Ingredients: Corn Flour, Wheat Bran, Corn Bran, Evaporated Cane Juice Crystals, Raisins, Cranberries, Oat Bran, Whey, Sliced Almonds, Pecans, Whole Oat Flour, Whole Triticale Flour, Whole Brown Rice Flour, Whole Wheat Flour, Whole Ruy Flour, Whole Barley Flour, Whole Buckwheat Flour, Salt, Caramel Color, Vitamins and Iron,Vitamin C, Iron, Niacin, vitamin A, Vitamin B6, Riboblavin, Thiamin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D.

Consorzio Raspberry & Balsamic Fat-Free Dressing

The Consorzio Raspberry & Balsamic Fat-Free Dressing has been one of my favorites for many years. I even used to export it to the Netherlands, when we lived there. Besides the fact, that I like raspberries in general a lot, I think that this is just a very nice dressing.
It has a great flavor, it is fruity, sweet, tart and very flavorful. The sweet-tartness is very nicely balanced. I also like that it does not contain any fat and is very low in sodium (10 mg per serving). I mostly use it directly as a dressing on my salads without adding something else to it. Of course you can mix it with a nice olive oil, if you like to add some fat. Also my daughter of three likes it a lot too, she uses it to dip her vegetables (carrot, cucumber, tomatoes) in instead of a ranch dressing.

They also have some interesting suggestions on the label for other uses (mix in chocolate, marinate meat or fish), but to be honest I have not tried them.

Below is an overview of the ingredients. They all seemed to be pretty straight forward, with the xanthan gum used to add some thickness to the dressing, so it is not too watery. It also makes it stick a bit better to the salad pieces, making sure that the dressing is actually eaten instead of ending up at the bottom of your salad bowl.

Ingredients: Raspberry Puree, Water, Sugar, Balsamic Vinegar, Distilled Vinegar, Natural Raspberry Extract, Salt Sea, Xanthan Gum

Better than Bouillon; Organic - Reduced Sodium

One of the products that I use almost every day while cooking is the 'Better than Bouillon' Bases and to be more specific, I use the 'Organic -  Reduced Sodium' ones. The broth comes as a paste in jars.  I use either the beef or chicken base to add flavor to many sauces and soups. It adds great flavor to the foods, is easy to use and dose, doesn't take up much space, doesn't go bad fast (like fresh broth or canned or boxed broth) and best of all it has a reduced amount of sodium and it is organic. The sodium content is 15% of the recommended daily value per teaspoon. And typically I add about a tablespoon per dish for 4 people and then skip adding salt altogether.
The chicken produces a clear yellow broth while the beef is more brown and has some small (meat?) particles in it, which my kids frown upon a bit if it is in a clear broth. But again the flavor of the broth is very good! I usually buy a 16 oz jar at my warehouse store.

I could not find a picture of the kind I buy online, not even on the company's website. But below are some products of the same brand, however they are either not organic or do not have a reduced sodium content. And the ones with the reduced sodium content, have only a 25% reduction compared to the regular one, while the organic reduced sodium version has a 50% reduction.



Click here, if you want to read more about what is going on in the food industry in regards of salt reduction!

My favorite lollipop!

Well maybe not my own favorite food, but definitely a winner for my kids. And I like them too as a candy for my children, as they appear to be one of the few more natural and edible options in confectionery.

Since we moved to the US about 18 months ago, I have been on the hunt for 'healthy foods' for my family but I am having an extremely hard time to find candy that have all natural flavors and colors and, very important, that are tasty. In the Netherlands, there seemed to be a bigger selection of confections with natural colors and flavors in regular supermarkets. Here it is barely impossible to find something that meets those three criteria in the confectionery aisle, unless you visit a health/natural store. And to be honest, most of the candy that is available there is not enjoyed by anybody in our home.

I am a sucker for natural ingredients and good taste in foods, because, ultimately if it doesn't taste good, nobody eats it even if you call it candy. But the regular candy in the supermarkets all seemed to be full of artificial colors and flavors or if they are not, they do not taste good.

So I like these lollipops because they are organic and contain natural colors and natural flavors, no genetically modified corn stuff and even the citric acid used is organic. Besides that they look good, nice and colorful, are not too sticky (so the wrapper comes off) and did I mention it, my kids like them too?

So what lollipop  am I talking about? The lollipop, I like is from Yummi Earth and comes in bags or in cute boxes (see above, they also have smaller boxes)  that you can reuse easily to store other things.

If you want to read more about food colors: visit IngredientsWizard.com/colors

My most favorite food: Dutch cheese with appelstroop sandwich

My most favorite food, that I can eat everyday, without getting tired of is a 'Dutch cheese sandwich with appelstroop'.

You could say that it is my Dutch heritage, growing up with it, but that is not really true. I did not eat cheese, or even would tough anything that had toughed cheese, until I was nineteen. So my favoritism is of my adulthood.

Let me first explain a bit for all not Dutch people (and probably plenty of Dutch people, because apparently what I am talking about is really something from the south (Limburg) of the Netherlands) what I mean when I say 'a Dutch cheese sandwich with appelstroop'.

A Dutch sandwich with cheese and appelstroop
(Boterham met kaas en appelstroop)
It is a slice of dutch bread, either white or (whole) wheat (latter is healthier, first can be an exceptional treat), with a layer of appelstroop (will explain this later or maybe even write a blog about it) and then one layer of Gouda cheese, a bit aged in general.

The combination of the soft, chewy bread, the sweet tart flavor of the appelstroop and the salty flavor of the Gouda cheese is something that is never boring to me.

It is really delicious!

My biggest issue with my favorite food is that I live in the United States. So some of the very essential parts of my favorite food are hard to find. In particular, a slice of tasty Dutch bread is almost impossible to find. Gouda cheese has made it to many stores in the US, so not too much of an issue. Appelstroop can be purchased through Dutch Food importers (yes, they exist and there are plenty of them), but the Dutch bread needs to be at least a bit fresh, and I have not really found a baker in the Bay area that makes such a thing. So I bake my own bread every other day to be able to have have my 'boterham met kaas en appelstroop'.

* The top image is what a typical dutch slice of wheat bread looks like, and the right picture is a slice of full grain bread with cheese. Of course I could not really find an image of one with appelstroop...