Natures Candy (& Some Archive Issues)

How many of you guys often forget about or completely over look “natures candy” when your sweet tooth kicks in?  I for one am definitely guilty!

I’m as guilty as the next guy when it comes to caving into a sweet
tooth and I just so happen to LOVE candy.  I’m  more of a fruity, chewy
girl than a chocolate girl… think along the lines of Twizzlers,
Swedish Fish, Dots, Nibs, Jelly Beans, Mike & Ikes… I think you
get the picture.

For the most part, I try not to keep junk or sweets in my house.  I find that “will power” (which I’m not a fan of) is not a strong suite of mine, so I figure why tempt fate.  If I don’t buy it, I don’t eat it, easy enough, right?  BUT, what I usually do have way back in the back of my cabinet is my “sweet stash”.  You may be familiar with the “sweet stash”, this is the area way in the back of the cabinet where you stash all the little treats you pick up here and there throughout the year… jelly beans from a baby shower, chocolate eggs from Easter, candy canes from Christmas, etc., etc…. (please don’t tell me I the only one!).

Anyhow after having one too many sweets  during my last  trip to Jersey (which never fails, I have a much harder time steering clear of junk when I am back home visiting) I came home and dumped the “sweet stash”!  Yep.  I threw the whole thing in the garbage.  And then apparently forgot all about it!

SO, needless to say, when I was having a major sweet tooth the other night I began to rumble around the cabinet for my “sweet stash” and it took me a good few minutes of searching before I remembered that it was gone.  Although I was disappointed,  I wasn’t about to give up, so I started thinking of other ways to satisfy my sweet tooth and that’s when it hit me… dried fruit!  Natures candy… why, of course!

I always have dried fruit in the cabinet.  Raisins, prunes, peaches, plums… BUT I rarely think of them as “dessert”.  They are more of a breakfast item for me.  You know, I toss them in my cereal or oatmeal, mix them into a yogurt, add them to my pancakes, I use them often and for lots of things but rarely for dessert.  But not anymore my friends.  I couldn’t believe how satisfying the dried fruit was for dessert!  I remember thinking that the raisins actually tasted like Gummi Bears!

The moral of the story is this…
Next time your sweet tooth kicks in, don’t be like me and completely over look all the sweets that nature has to offer!  The possibilities are endless and they are way more nourishing than white sugar laden candy!

Do you guys have any natural alternatives to candy and sugar that hit the spot when you are craving something sweet?  If so, please share them with me (I’m always on the look out for a good one;).

*ARCHIVE ISSUES:
Onto a completely different and fairly frustrating blog issue.  I was recently going through YouTube (where I host all my videos) and I decided to take a whole bunch of old recipe videos down (almost fifty of them).  I wanted to update content and photos and just wasn’t thinking that once I took them off of YouTube they would also be deleted from this site as well (I don’t know, can I still use the whole baby brain excuse?!).

Needless to say you’re gonna notice that a lot of videos and recipes will be missing from the archives for a while and I may have a handful of broken links (which I working as quickly as I can to fix).  Also, if you are another blogger that was linked to one of these archives your links will be broken as well (sorry!).

I apologize for the  inconvenience that this may cause anyone, and if there is or was a specific recipe that used to be here that you are looking for just shoot me an email and I will forward it to you. 

Here’s to many weeks of updating ahead of me and a BIG FAT THANK YOU for your patience and understanding!

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