Product Review: Hail Merry Macaroons

Posted: April 9, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Product Review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
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image via Hail Merry

What does one talk about after a cleanse?  Chocolate!  As I get closer and closer to banishing refined sugar completely from my life, I’ve come to regard Hail Merry as a shining beacon as I cruise the grocery store. These chocolate macaroons are a staple in our house.  I can stare at Chocolate Covered Katie all day long, BUT when it comes to treats and sweets I, like most Americans, like sweets made for me and ready to go as soon as the inclination hits.  However, I have no interest in reaching for a Snickers to satisfy, it needs to be high quality, with amazing flavor and no ingredients that my 8 year old would have trouble reading.  These guys have no refined sugar plus they are GF, contain raw oils, are vegan, kosher and non GMO certified – whew, that’s some cred, but the crowing jewel is that they are delicious.  My husband loves these before a pre-dawn bike ride, I love them for a 3:00 break with Rooibos tea, my 6 year old son loves them, my daughter “hates coconut” so refuses to even touch one of these but she happily downs another Hail Merry treat (that also contains loads of coconut – go figure).  Also, Susan O’Brien, the founder of Hail Merry and inventor of these genius treats lives in Dallas, so it’s just another small way I can support my local community and a woman owned business.  Not to worry if you don’t live in the great state of Texas,  Hail Merry is distributed nationwide.

So although, I owed you guys a review of Gnosis Chocolate, I’m going to go with the solid advice of, “if you don’t have anything nice to say…..”   One thing I will say IF you are dying for a chocolate bar and looking for a high quality sure thing I like Green and Blacks (try to go for 70% cacao or above), also Lilly’s if you want to go completely sugar free (however they do contain soy).

Happy yummy snacking!

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All you need is love and supplements?

Posted: February 14, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Health | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all.  We aren’t big fans of Valentine’s Day at 800arrows, but it can turn a normal purchase like vitamins into a loving gesture toward spending a long, healthy life together.  So that’s what we’ve done, today also happened to coincide beautifully with the Gnosis chocolate delivery, so hey look at us, chocolate on Valentine’s Day!

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But the real gems today are the supplements we decided to experiment with.  Our reasoning was after the cleanse we’d be feeling pretty darn good, would we notice a difference if we were taking supplements?  A couple of my favorite places online did a run down on supplements, the basics that  day to day we should consider taking, you can check it out here and here.  After a little price comparison, we decided on the “Daily Dose” from Dr. Lipman.  They come pre packed, 5 pills in a pack, you get your Vitamin D, fish oil, multivitamin, probiotic, if you’d like you can read all about it here.  The verdict is we both feel great!  Could it still be the effects of the cleanse, sure, but we have about two weeks with the supplements so hopefully we’ll get a more robust experience as things like pancakes make their way back into our life.

One concern right out of the box is the packaging with this particular brand we’ve chosen.  The prepack makes things ridiculously easy, but whoa, it’s a lot of plastic!  Also the packs are about 1 year old, I’m not really sure on the shelf life for this kind of thing, but these are things I’ll be looking into further when we decide if we like this addition to our lives.

As for the chocolate, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for the review, it’s for our 3:00 treat today!

Chocolate hugs and vitamins,

D

All in – Week 3

Posted: February 6, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Health | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

An interesting thing happened this week.  As my husband and I started to discuss how we’d like to continue the “Clean” lifestyle after this 3 week cleanse I found myself starting to cheat.  I’m not talking coffee and french fries but maybe an organic brown rice cake smothered in almond butter and covered with blueberries after I’ve had a very filling lunch.  While all those foods are “on program”, my purpose for this cleanse is to give my body a break, to abstain from the special little something after my lunch, this is a detox not an all you can eat buffet.

I am happy to explore the 1,001 clean chocolate-y dessert options out there, in fact I just ordered this Gnosis chocolate.  But AFTER this three week experiment is over – in the meantime, my husband and I are discussing our strong finish to this 21 day food journey.

We’ve agreed for our last day to juice all day – no food, just green juice.  My husband is pushing to juice for day 20 AND 21, he’s so hard core!  I am not hard core and I’m not very nice when I’m hungry, so I countered with smoothies AND juices for days 20 and 21.  Stay tuned to see how we decided to glowingly glide across our finish line.