April

We are back from our spring break trip to San Diego last week.  I will share some of my photos in the next few days.  It is a nice city and there were so many lovely plants there.

But first, an update on the self imposed soda challenge.  I did it! A whole month without soda.  What did I learn?  Obviously, that I can survive without it.  Also, pizza really is better with soda (or beer if you prefer).

I thought the first few days might be the hardest because of the lack of caffeine (which in diet Coke is way less than coffee or tea, but what my body is use to).  But that didn't happen.  No headaches. After that, it seemed what I really wanted was the carbonation, something fizzy.  Since I was banning ALL soda, my thoughts turned to beer.  Thankfully, I did not drink much more than I usually do (which is hardly any, maybe one every month or two, or three . . .).

As I went along, I was getting bored with just water (I don't drink coffee or iced tea).  I would drink some juice but I didn't want to be drinking a lot of that because it still has sugar, even if it is natural.

I started searching at the grocery store for some alternatives. It's always eye opening to read the ingredients on products. I looked at Snapple drinks which claim to be all natural.  The regular bottle I picked up had high fructose corn syrup listed as one of the first ingredients.  I guess that is natural since it is made from corn, but I try to avoid it as much as possible.

The diet versions had aspartame, which is also not the greatest.  (Yes, diet Coke has aspartame, too.  When I buy it at the grocery store, I get the version with Splenda instead of aspartame. Although my daughter tells me Splenda is also bad for me. I'm guessing it's better than aspartame.)

I looked at the SoBe drinks and found they had high sugar content, except for their Lean version.

It has green tea, honey, stevia and some other things.  It's good. I like it watered down a lit bit with ice.  That was my new go-to drink when I was bored with water.

What I would like to do is a kitchen experiment to see if I could make something similar by brewing my own green tea and trying different amounts of honey and stevia mixed in.

I had my first diet Coke on the airplane yesterday.  It was good to have caffeine as we got up at 4:30 a.m. I will continue to drink soda, but I think I will not have it at home all the time.