Well, I think I’ve done it. I’ve managed to top my own dear mother’s enthusiastic embrace of carob in the seventies. Damn you, carob! You are NOT a chocolate substitute and I’m still scarred. (Is carob even good for you? I bet it’s not. Kind of like all that margarine we ate because “butter will kill you” and then my dad died of a heart attack at fifty. Yay, margarine.)
It all began with a two a.m. panic attack about radiation from Fukushima. I jumped down the Google rabbit hole in search of ways to protect my family (See this post about my attempts to make my family Death Proof), came across spirulina as something that was used in post-Hiroshima Japan with success, and was reminded that I used to take spirulina all the time, and that I felt great when I did.
Spirulina! Spirulina! It’s going to save us! Okay, great. It very well might. Or maybe I’m once again worried about nothing. Maybe the things that keep us awake at night are never the things that get us; it’s the things that you never even think to worry about that do. Okay, cool. I’ve been known to overreact. I have been accused on more than one occasion of being high-strung. Whatever. Spirulina is good for you. I started taking it. Billy paid some lip service to being willing to take it, though he hasn’t yet. The kids? They won’t touch the stuff and I can’t find it in any kid-friendly formulas.
I had this brilliant idea… I would mix spirulina powder into a sort of healthy candy concoction. I was so sure it would work I blabbed about it on Facebook, with plans to report back and share the recipe.
Yeah.
Coconut butter, peanut butter, unsweetened cocoa, raw honey, and spirulina powder. Sounds pretty good, right? I melted the butters together, mixed in the cocoa, honey, and spirulina, and plunked gobs of it onto parchment paper. I stuck them in the freezer and got these messy sort of homemade chocolate drops. They looked pretty good. They tasted like…Okay–you’ll be shocked to read this, I know… They tasted like chocolate peanut butter algae. Who would have thought that adding algae to chocolate and peanut butter would get you that result? (Hush. Hush now. That’s unkind.)
Do I even need to say that the kids wouldn’t eat them? I had a few, just to prove a point. What point? I don’t know. They weren’t very good and I like the taste of spirulina. I think it didn’t play well with the peanut butter. I still want to get spirulina into the kids, but now I’m not sure how. It has such a strong taste. They would reject it in a smoothie, too, I bet.
Suggestions? Or just want to call me crazy? Because that’s cool, too. But if you could call me crazy and then tell me how to get spirulina into these kids, it would be much appreciated.
Applesauce. (And it’s okay that you’re crazy.)
do you eat fish? I’ve never actually had spirulina, but we had some at my last job and I smelled it. I think you’ll have better luck mixing like flavors than trying it in a sweet. Maybe make rice balls with seaweed and put some spirulina on top of the rice before you roll it?
I have no idea but this is fucking hilarious. I hate carob with all my soul because my mother would NEVER give me a straight answer until I bit into the cookie. It was always carob. Always.
My Xhusband used to take pills…but the first time I ever had spirulina was in an Odwalla Juice drink about 20 years ago… Probably not the amounts you’re looking for but…it was super tasty, like apple juice, actually. Do they still add it to commercially produced juices like that? (I am kind of out of the loop.) As for the Apple Sauce – won’t it make it green? How about adding it to eggs and serving it up an order of green eggs and ham?
I’ve never tried spirulina, but maybe if you start with a little bit, and work your way up to a dose? I like the rice ball idea or applesauce
I’ve eaten it in a smoothie with blueberries. I didn’t taste the spiraling
I mean spirulina
Yup, my kids love the “green machine” juice from Naked. We buy it in the huge jugs sometimes. It has 1300 mg of spirulina plus other bits of stuff like chlorella, blue green algae, barley grass, wheat grass, etc… Maybe not a lot in a glass, but they have it as a treat and I assume it adds up eventually. They all three love it and they all have really different tastes. It tastes like apple-pear-banana juice.
A small cafe I go to makes a protein shake called “Green Swamp” that contains spirulina and it tastes awesome. It’s my favourite. He uses a mixture of apple juice and water for the liquid base, peanut butter, protein powder, blueberries, and a banana. I think that’s everything, and I’ll get back to you if there’s more.
Spirulina sounds like a Disney ballerina princess. Or an ugly stepsister. One or the other.
I can barely get my kids to eat anything unless it’s chicken nuggets or it has frosting on it. So, I suggest chicken nuggets with spirulina frosting on top. Let the record show that I have no idea what I’m talking about.
I juiced kale one time because I had it in overabundance. It doesn’t juice very well and smells really bad. So because I am super intelligent I decided to mix it with the kid’s juice and make popsicles out of it.
It was the nastiest thing I’ve ever tasted. Sebastian ate his but I couldn’t even finish mine. I threw the rest away.
Do you know, when my kids were little I gave them carob all the time. Adamant about avoiding chocolate. It’s almost 20 years later now, and for the life of me I can’t remember why I was on about it.
I had these at a party a few weeks ago. They weren’t totally yucky.
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=8F7AD0E25F97D91FB295A1DC3B4964FB
I keep hearing that its good and then on other sites I hear it is unsafe and can cause gastrenteritis or liver problems. I wish I can get a straight answer on this.
I keep hearing that its good and then on other sites I hear it is unsafe and can cause gastrenteritis or liver problems. I wish I can get a straight answer on this.
I keep hearing that its good and then on other sites I hear it is unsafe and can cause gastrenteritis or liver problems. I wish I can get a straight answer on this.