My Morning Oasis

I've never been a coffee drinker, but my daughters introduced me to blended coffee drinks, and later, flavored lattes at Starbucks and Tully's....Coffee mixed with lots of milk and sugar is a much different thing!  But it's not in my budget and not suitable for my troubles with reactive hypoglycemia.  For awhile we made afternoon smoothies of the Frappe Freeze mix available from Costco and Amazon, but the nutrition and cost dissuaded me with that stuff, too.                                                                                                                                                                                                          
Now to give myself warmth and respite on these cold winter mornings, I have my own homemade concoction.                                                                                                                                                     
Ingredients                                                                                                                                                                                            

1/2 cup Coffee:  To start, I make a small pot of coffee from homeground Tully's or Green Mountain Coffee Espresso blend beans. (True coffee lovers would shudder over the fact that we make coffee and use it over 2 or 3 days.)                                                                                     
1 cup milk:  I am lactose intolerant, so I use Kirkland or Silk vanilla soy milk  (1 cup of soy milk per day is supposed to be beneficial for us 'women of a certain age' anyway)                                                              
Microwave the milk (or both coffee and milk if the coffee is cold) until hot.  I put in mine at 80% for 1 minute 50 seconds...Yours may vary depending on the power and options of your microwave.
If coffee is fresh, add it after heating the milk.                                                                                                  
Sweetener:  I use Torani Syrup, and my personal favorite is their Hazelnut.  I feel comfortable with this because it has a natural cane sugar base, not high fructose corn syrup.  Also, I only use 1 Tablespoon at most, as I've cut back on sweets, and any more is too much for me.  Another good alternative for sweetening without extra flavor is Blue Agave Nectar.  I would use only 1/2 tablespoon or so of that.                                                                                                           
Topper:  For a bit of creaminess, I splash in a couple tablespoons of cream or 1/4 cup of almond milk.  In November and December I replace the sweetener and the topper with 1/3 cup eggnog...Yum!




Calorie count:
1 cup Vanilla Soy milk...............100
1/2 cup coffee.......................    3
1 Tbsp Torani syrup..................  40
2 Tbsp cream.........................  90
TOTAL                                          233 Calories


Replacing the cream:                                                                                                     
1/4 cup Vanilla Almond milk.....  23
TOTAL                                         166 Calories


Replacing the cream and sweetener:    
1/3 cup Eggnog......................127
TOTAL                                          230 Calories


Compare to Starbucks:
Flavored Soy Latte (Grande).......240 Calories
With Whip.............................300 Calories
EggNog Latte (Grande)..............470 Calories


Plus, mine are a fraction of the cost, and I can have one without leaving the comfort of my own home.   :-)