Recently, I got a blender and have finally been able to try out Jorge Cruise’s recipe from the Belly Fat Cure book for the Sugar Free Chocolate Shake. The recipe is on Page 83 under the title “Chocolate Lover’s Shake.”

When buying the ingredients, I opted to get Vanilla flavored Whey Powder instead of the Chocolate flavor the recipe calls for. I figure if I want to experiment with other flavors then it’s easier to use Vanilla as the base flavor. I initially had some of Clemmy’s Chocolate flavored Ice Cream and opted to use it and the chocolate flavored unsweetened almond milk to add the chocolate flavor. I didn’t bother adding any of the Truvia as I wanted to see how sweet it would taste without it and I threw all the ingredients into the blender and let it do it’s thing and poured the shake into a hurricane glass and topped it with whipped cream.

The shake tasted amazing. I’ve since made a few more shakes and have tried some other variations, everything from Clemmy’s Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Vanilla almond milk and adding cocoa powder to give it chocolate flavor and even adding a few ice cubes to the blender to help it stay colder longer and it’s been fun experimenting with various ways to make the shake. I’ve even thrown in Psyllium Husks to add more fiber to the shake and they’ve all come out delicious and completely guilt free and sugar free.

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In my time on the Belly Fat Cure, one of the earliest things recommended was very dark chocolate, first Jorge Cruise was recommending the Green & Black’s‘s 85% Dark Chocolate, and more recently the Ghirardelli Midnight Reverie 85% Cacao dark chocolate. Both offer dark chocolate with only 5 grams of sugar per serving. I’ve never been a big fan of dark chocolate in my life so I’ve resisted trying either brand…until now.

Pretty much my indulgences in Chocolate on the Belly Fat Cure have been in the form of sugar free chocolates such as the line of sugar free chocolates from Hershey’s which includes miniature sized candies of several Hershey owned brands like Hershey’s (Chocolate Bars), Reese’s (Peanut Butter Cups), and York (Peppermint Patties), which have been fine, but sometimes not quite as indulgent as I would like. I’ve also just allowed myself to have the chocolates I do like but only in very small tiny portions, such as a single Dove square, or my favorites imported from Canada such as mini Aero bars and mini Coffee Crisp bars. I’ve actually done quite well with those, I ordered some from Canada in July and I still have a sizable number of the mini bars left and it’s now February. In the old days they wouldn’t have lasted a week, much less 7 months so far.

So I happened to be in the store and saw the Ghirardelli chocolate, and thought I’ll give it a try as I can have four squares of it for a single serving. So I got it out to the car, and opened up the package and broke off a small piece and bit into it, and let’s just say, I quickly posted on Twitter that not only was it my first ever purchase of the 86% Cacao chocolate, but also my last purchase and that my opinion of it was that it was “Fucking Disgusting.”

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Following my visit to the Sonic Drive-In in Vista, I stopped at the nearby Frazier Farms Market mainly to see they had any Ginger Ale Zevia, which they did have, but I was intrigued by what I saw next to the Zevia. With so few beverage manufacturers realizing that there is a market for sugar free drinks that don’t use artificial sweeteners, it’s always a nice surprise when a new comes to market that is able to be naturally sugar free, and today, I discovered a new product that I just had to bring home to try out.

That new product is Steaz Zero Calorie Sparking Green Tea. Essentially it’s a flavored tea product made with sparking water so it looks and tastes more like an exotic flavored soda instead of a tea product. The tea is sweetened with Erythritol and Stevia extract thereby making it a great option for people following Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program. The teas are also organically grown with special mention on the bottles about how its sustainably sourced for a natural and organically based beverage. There’s also several logos on the bottle to indicate it’s compliance with several programs such as certifications for being organic, vegan, fair trade, and a low carbon footprint during manufacturing. Essentially indicating the company is as environmentally focused as it is profit driven, definitely an admirable quality.

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To help promote the Belly Fat Cure book, Jorge Cruise has been making a couple of appearances to sign books for the public. At the moment only two appearances had been scheduled, an appearance earlier in the month at a Costco membership warehouse in New York, and today at the Morena Boulevard Costco here in San Diego. The signing started at noon.

I wasn’t planning on attending but I had an appointment to check out a room for rent in the Pacific Beach area at 2 pm and Pacific Beach is just a couple of miles from the Costco location. I took care of my morning errands and got to the Pacific Beach area at about 1 pm and since I had an hour before my appointment, I headed right over to the Costco. I wasn’t sure if it was still going on but thought I’d check it out just in case.

Sure enough, the signing was still going on and Jorge was busy talking to folks and as soon as he saw me he introduced me to the group of people around the table. He invited people to ask me questions and I did field a few from people who had seen the sugar video I did with Jorge. Overall it was really nice to meet some people interested in losing weight. Also there was Michelle McGowen, a fellow Belly Fat Cure success story. Jorge then shared samples of his sugar free brownies with the crowd and amazed them all with how sweet tasting a sugar free treat can be.

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One of my favorite things of 2009, was discovering Zevia’s all natural sodas when I was introduced to the Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise. I’ve been a big fan of Zevia since my very first purchase. Their sodas are all natural, and naturally sugar free, and calorie free. They are sweetened by Stevia, a South American plant who’s name means “sweet leaf” and Erythritol, a sugar alcohol that naturally occurs in plants.

At the time I first started trying Zevia, they only had four flavors, Cola (similar to Coca-Cola or Pepsi), Natural Twist (a lemon-lime soda similar to 7-Up or Sprite), Root Beer (similar to A&W), and Orange (similar to Fanta). Soon after they introduced two new flavors, Ginger Ale (similar to Canada Dry) and Black Cherry (similar to a Cherry 7-Up). And now they’ve introduced a new flavor called, Dr. Zevia, which naturally is similar to Dr. Pepper.

It was quite a while following the introduction of the Ginger Ale and Black Cherry Zevia flavors before I ever found them in the stores, so this time I ordered a couple of cases of the new Dr. Zevia directly from Zevia. Fortunately they were offering a great discount at the time which dropped the price of shipping for the two cases down to just a couple of bucks over top the price of the cases. And after a couple of weeks of waiting for the order to ship and for FedEx Ground Service to deliver it, the Dr. Zevia had finally arrived.

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As some of my readers may recall, a few weeks ago I had a craving for some A&W food, and to my surprise discovered all the locations in San Diego County had closed up shop. (Click here to read about it if you missed it.) Since I was in Orange County for Robert Shadbolt’s birthday at Disneyland, I decided on the way home I was going to seek out one of the A&W’s on the way home from Disneyland. But I wasn’t really hungry and by the time I found the location in Mission Viejo with a slight diversion off the highway, it was a few minutes before they closed.

I didn’t really want food, so I elected to just get a Root Beer Float, except using the Diet Root Beer instead of the regular. Officially even those are a no-no items on my Belly Fat Cure program, because the ice cream has sugar in it, and the Diet Root Beer has aspartame in it. But as a Dr. Edward Taub frequently states, “Everything in moderation….including moderation.” And so I had a small Root Beer Float with two bad ingredients. On the Belly Fat Cure, I’m not supposed to have a meal that exceeds 5 grams of sugar and 2 carb servings or a 5/2. The Diet Root Beer Float was a 17/2, which is okay on the carb end, but 2 more grams of sugar than I’m supposed to have in a whole day. Still far better than the 57/4 getting the regular root beer version would have been. So I cheated on my program a little.

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Now that 2009 has come to a close and 2010 has begun, I can safely say that it’s a year that has been very challenging and although I am not the least bit sad to see 2009 go, it certainly was not without some really incredible experiences for me that I would like to highlight before wipe the slate clean and start fresh with 2010.

This list was especially difficult to narrow down since 2009 was the year I kicked my blogging into high gear. I had started Ryan’s Incredible World in 2007 didn’t actually start blogging until 2008 and I would maybe make no more than five entries a month. So picking my highlights of 2008 was relatively easy since there wasn’t so many blog entries to go through to pick out the defining moments.

I had joined a couple of 30-Day blogging challenges which requires 30 blog entries in 30 days and it essentially got me into the habit of making almost daily blog entries. Now it’s pretty safe to say that each month sees about 25 new blog entries. The constant blogging has actually helped bring a bigger audience to my blog, so if your first time reading any of my writing has been in 2009, then no doubt something I wrote in 2009 caught your eye and is why you’re here reading this entry now. I am grateful for the many folks who’ve read my blog and left me comments, it’s been a pleasure to hear your feedback throughout the year. In any case, I looked through every post of 2009 to select what I feel were the 10 Most Incredible Things about 2009 that happened for me. You’ll note I combined a few complimentary things to narrow it down to 10.

I do hope you enjoy my reflection on 2009 and continue to join me on my quest to find the most incredible things of 2010. Without further ado, in no particular order.

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One of my favorite parts of the holidays is Egg Nog. And because I’ve been on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program all year and have eliminated high amounts of sugar from my diet, it meant it wasn’t looking good for having Egg Nog this year, well at least not the store bought variety. It didn’t help any when Jorge did a video with tips for surviving the holidays and his answer to Egg Nog was to just avoid it in general. Although it was meant as a tip for at holiday parties where it Egg Nog is being made by other people.

Not to let the season pass by without any Egg Nog, I went on the hunt for a recipe and came across several, but some seemed more complicated than I wanted to make it. Some called for Egg Nog flavored syrups that are sweetened with Splenda which is simply not an acceptable option for me. I tried a couple of recipes on a small one serving batches to try them out, but wasn’t really pleased with any of them. I did find one that seems to work the best. I found it on About.com. It also has a variation for those who don’t want to use eggs. The recipe calls for alcohol which I don’t always like in my Egg Nog and I decided to borrow Cinnamon from another recipe for Egg Nog I found and have liked this one the best.

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Yesterday, I braved the heavy rains that hit San Diego to visit Kim Barry, the wonderful lady who has been my contact at Jorge Cruise‘s office since my very first day on the Belly Fat Cure program. She’s the one I’ve been in touch with on weekly basis during my time on the Costco 100 case study group and ever since that group ended I still keep in touch with Kim. Every time I try out a new recipe I always keep Kim in the loop and I always keep a sample of it for Kim to bring to her any chance I get.

Well I haven’t seen Kim in a while so I had a variety of samples to bring to her. Kim was out of town the last time I stopped by Jorge’s office on September 2nd to deliver some samples of my “Almost Sugar Free Black Forest Cake” and Nanaimo Bars. I wanted to make sure Kim had a chance to enjoy them too, so saved a slice of the cake for Kim and it’s been in the freezer since September. I would have given it to her sooner, except we couldn’t quite find a day where she would be in the office that would line up with when I had a chance to head into San Diego to stop by.

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Junior’s Cheesecakes make the best desserts and wouldn’t you love to share an amazing cheesecake with your family this holiday season? I would never have considered getting one myself without having gone to New York and tried a slice of Junior’s Sugar Free Cheesecake, it was so incredibly delicious that I ordered a whole cheesecake shortly after I returned home to San Diego.

Sure the cheesecakes aren’t cheap, but they taste incredible. For my Belly Fat Cure friends, Junior’s offers two cheesecake options that are okay to have on the Belly Fat Cure program. A Plain sugar free cheesecake and a sugar free cheesecake sampler. The sugar free cheesecakes are made with Xylitol, an all natural sweetener so you don’t have to worry about any of the toxic artificial sweeteners. While this does leave out the option of getting one of Junior’s more creative cheesecakes like the Christmas cheesecake pictured above, trust me you won’t be disappointed. It’s a special treat you’ll want to savor and it can be completely guilt free.

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