I just got my order from Iherb.com today! I was really excited to see two packages waiting for me, two packages of things I’ve really wanted for a long time, and finally arrived!
I like buying from IHerb because there’s free shipping in the US and pretty cheap international shipping (though each package has a pretty low weight limit). There’s a good reward system and you get $10 off your first order if you order over $40, or $5 off if you order under that amount if you use this code: LPL829. They have pretty good prices for many healthy foods, vitamins, supplements, etc… But of course, do your own price comparison before buying to make sure it’s the cheapest item.

So, what did I order?

We don’t do processed sugar in our house, and though I buy honey and jaggery and date syrup, etc… and have many available sweeteners, when I want to just do normal baking, I want to be able to convert recipes that call for white sugar, and use a healthier granulated sugar. I’ve used coconut sugar in the past and loved it, so I ordered more of it, and also wanted to try sucanat, which is evaporated cane syrup.

So I ordered both. The sucanat looks pretty similar to the coconut sugar, and I have to say, the taste isn’t that far off…

I also ordered coconut aminos, which is a grain free, soy free, soy sauce alternative and I was looking for it in my country and they don’t sell it here, and I was trying to order it from the US for a while, but it was out of stock for so long… and finally now it arrived. And meh. It doesn’t taste so special, doesn’t taste so similar to soy sauce. Maybe if I were really desperate, I’d use it, but I’d rather use my own homemade grain free terriyaki or my homemade fish sauce instead of the coconut aminos if I was looking for something soy and grain free…
Oh well. Maybe I’ll learn to like the taste. I only tasted it on my finger thus far, maybe it’ll be different in cooking.

I also got real peppermint and orange extract to use in dessert making. The only stuff they had locally was artificial, and I wanted the real deal, not chemicals masked as mint or orange…

Can’t wait to make mint chocolate brownies, or mint ice cream!! Oh my gosh, so many ideas!! (Thinking of using my homemade chewy chocolate chunks in place of chocolate chips, and then have a coconut milk and sunflower milk based ice cream sweetened with honey….)

The last thing on the list is magnesium oil. Most people are deficient in magnesium, because the body has a hard time absorbing magnesium through the digestive system. There are many symptoms caused by low magnesium. I was having some headaches and people recommended I take magnesium, as well as some other issues that people recommended would be helped by taking magnesium. The best way to take it is actually to rub it into your skin, because your skin absorbs things very well and it bypasses the digestive system that way, and goes straight into your blood stream. (That’s why you have to be careful about what you put on your skin!) Some say it stings a little bit when you put it on your skin, but I felt no stinging…

Anyhow, I just wanted to say that I am happy that iherb is green, but my kids might be disappointed. Instead of having bubble wrap, they had this cool paper bubble wrap alternative, which is recycleable, until bubble wrap which just ends up in the landfill… And it works just as well to protect things, it just isn’t as fun to play with.