New frontier of ingredients...

After reading up on what the Whole30 was all about, I started reading a few different blogs and recipe books, and found I was coming across some new ingredients which were repeated often and looked to be quite useful. I bought some of these from iHerb, and my order arrived the other day...

Coconut aminos is in recipes that would normally ask for soy sauce, it is Whole30 friendly, and since I do use a fair bit of soy sauce in a lot of recipes, and have found a few new tasty looking ones to try, I figured it would be a good investment.

Coconut butter...I probably could have a go at making this myself, but as I mentioned in a previous blog, I don't have a high powered blender and I was worried I would burn out the motor of my ninja blender. I don't have the top of the range one, just the standard, and since coconut butter (although its made from just coconut) needs to be blended for a good while, I didn't want to chance breaking my good old ninja! Now, if I could only remember which recipes I saw it in hehe...I'm sure I'll come across them again. I did have a sneaky taste of it though. Yum!!!

Sunflower seed butter is an ingredient in Sunshine Sauce, which is used in a few recipes I'm planning on making from Well Fed. It is useful as a dressing for salads too and as dipping sauces for crudites. I must say, I am not a huge fan of salads unless they come with a tasty dressing, so I decided it would be worthwhile getting this ingredient.

The larabars...ok, they aren't Whole30 friendly, but they are paleo-friendly, and I have wanted to try them and see what the fuss is about. They aren't available in Australia, so I thought I may as well grab a box of mini assorted ones while I was getting an iHerb order. Incidentally, just after I ordered them I saw a facebook post about Emma & Tom's Lifebars which are fairly similar, and available at Woolworths. I tried the Cacao & Orange flavour (I'm a sucker for choc-orange anything), and it was really nice, and very filling. Of the three flavours in the box of larabars, I think my least favourite is the cherry flavour, its a bit sour. The other two are ok though. Having now tried both, I think in future I might stick with the Emma & Tom's ones...but as a sometimes treat once I have my first Whole30 under my belt!  And hopefully my Woolworths will start to stock a few more flavours as they only had the cacao & orange or the cherry & goji. Goji...not a fan!