Diabetes-free Vanilla Cream Soda

I really like drinking soda but I'm deathly afraid of high fructose corn syrup and aspartame, which eliminates a lot of my options. Lately, I've been experimenting with Stevia baking, with fairly good results, so I've expanded to sodas. You can get flavored liquid Stevia in bottles with droppers at your local health food store. I get mine at my local farmer's market. There are all kinds of flavors: orange, root beer, vanilla, strawberry, cherry. These are great for flavoring desserts and anything that asks for these extracts plus the addition of sugar. They're also great in creating flavored sodas. You can add them to your cola if you so desire, or make your own.

Vanilla Cream Soda

1 c sparkling water (mineral water is fine but has a salty taste so sometimes just normal carbonated water is best)
3 drops of liquid vanilla stevia

Pour sparkling water into a glass. Add stevia drop by drop and gently stir. You don't want to stir too much because the soda will lose its fizz. Add ice and serve.

This is great with grilled veggie burgers and polenta fries. Mmmm.

Oatmeal Coconut Banana cookies

I adapted this recipe from the one at Vegan Vice using ingredients I had. We had a big bunch of very ripe bananas, and last night I made a great vegan banana bread with 3 of them. I'll post the recipe for that later. Today, I made these cookies with the last two bananas.

Dry ingredients:
1 c whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ginger
1 c brown sugar
1 c steel cut oats
1/2 c coconut flakes

Wet ingredients:
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
1/4 c canola or vegetable oil
2 tbsp vanilla soy milk
1/4 c mashed ripe banana

Preheat oven to 375F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and spray with oil.

In one bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and ginger. Add brown sugar, rolled oats, and coconut flakes. The brown sugar will be clumpy, so stir up the ingredients well.

In another bowl, combine wet ingredients. Make sure the bananas are well-mashed or you'll get big gooey chunks. Gradually add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.

Spoon cookies onto cookie sheet. Bake for about 10-12 minutes on the middle rack. Take them out and let them cool.

Enjoy!