Been trying to find something for my sweet tooth! Today I was introduced to Craisens. They are dried cranberries...100% natural. They are great I just thought i'd share to those who have a constant sweet tooth like me....and I didn't like cranberries before, and these are pretty awesome
I love those too, but I can't just eat a little. Also, they make me very hungry, otherwise I might find a way to just eat a little. For me, I like to munch on frozen grapes. They help me a lot. Have you tried that? I just wash them and put them into a cup and one cup is only about 65 calories and it takes a long time to eat.
I love craisins, but I almost never buy them, because they're TOO much like candy to me (especially the "cherry" flavored ones).
I also love frozen grapes. Whenever I buy grapes, I eat about half fresh, and I freeze the other half. Usually I just rinse, pull from the stems and freeze in a ziploc bag (flat, so they don't freeze in one giant clump).
Once in a while though, I'll buy grapes that are really sour (I usually only have this problem with green grapes, reds always are sweet), then I'll use a tip I think I heard in a Weight Watcher's or TOPS meeting. Just toss some dry sugar-free jello mix, any flavor into the ziploc bag with the grapes and shake to coat, before freezing. They taste like popsicle nuggets.
I've also used the sugar-free jello mix coating on unsweetened blueberies and cranberries.
I put these in salad.....Some greens, a little sliced red onion, swiss or mozzarella cheese, a few almonds or walnuts and craisins. Top with an apple cider vinigarette. YUM!
I like a T of cranberries in my muesli. I'd really prefer to use unsweetened (although I haven't tried them!), but they can be hard to find. Good on salads too.
They are reallly sweet, almost to sweet, but i LOVE sweet...and im glad i found these instead of junk lol....
havent tried the frozen grapes...sounds good I will try it!!
And craisins with oatmeal sound REALLLLY good, I only have instand oatmeal at the moment and have to check the calories..if its low than im going to try it tomorrow morning!
Many health food stores have unsugared dried cranberries. The are usually a lot more expensive than craisins though. These days I am able to eat just a little of them and so I have switched back to craisins cuz they're cheaper. I frequently put them in things, it makes a small serving of them go further. The orange flavored ones go great in bran muffins, I usually add some orange extract or zest too. I also put them in salads. If you've ever had the broccoli salad from wal-mart - I make something similar with craisins instead of the golden raisins. I sometimes put a few in the batter for my whole grain pancakes. A few tossed in a smoothie is good. Before I was trying to eat healthy I would eat a whole bag of them. I'm quite glad it's fall, I will soon get fresh cranberries.
I received a free sample of of a 100 calorie pack of craisens at the grocery store a few weeks back. I put them in a chicken salad sandwich I made and they were surprisingly good. They were much sweeter than anything I would normally eat though.
One of the things I like the most is orange flavored cranberries from my Farmers Market. Mmmm..deeelish. I cannot buy them too often though--I just cannot stay outta the crazy things.
I love the broccoli, raisin, onion, sunflower seed salad (I don't add bacon, though which I've sometimes seen in grocery store versions of the salad).
I do exchange other nuts and seeds for the sunflower seeds, and other dried fruits for the raisins. Craisins are one of my favorite raisin replacerments in the recipe. Diced apricots are good too (and fruit I can easily find unsweetened). Pepitas (pumpkin seed kernels) are a great stand-in for the sunflower seeds. My MIL uses cashews, and I would have expected to love it, because I do have a cashew-weakness, but I didn't. Oh, they were very good, but they lose some of their cashewiness in the salad - a perfect waste of cashews in my opinion.
OceanSpray Craisins!
