Ingredients:
1 c. almonds, ground into coarse meal
1 c. sliced or coarsely chopped almonds
1 c. oat or spelt flour
1 c. rolled oats, ground into flour in your blender
¼ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. salt
½ c. oil
½ c. maple syrup or coconut nectar
5 oz. chopped dark chocolate

Combine ground and sliced almonds, oats, flour, cinnamon and salt. In a separate bowl blend wet ingredients. Add wet to dry ingredients. Mix well. Form into two loaves. Bake at 350 degrees for ten minutes, and let cool for five minutes. With a sharp knife, carefully cut into 1/2-inch thick slices. Spread out on a baking sheet, and bake another 10-12 minutes, until loaves begin to brown. (Caution: they burn easily.) Allow biscotti to cool completely before dipping into chocolate. Place chocolate into a Pyrex measuring cup, and creating a double boiler, place the measuring cup into a pot of boiling water. Lower to a simmer, melting the chocolate.

Allow chocolate to cool about three minutes. Tilt the measuring cup so the chocolate gathers in a pool, and use a rubber spatula to get every bit of chocolate from the sides! One at a time, dip each piece of biscotti about one inch into the melted chocolate. Lift out and drag the underside of the cookie on the lip of the measuring cup to remove excess chocolate. Place on a waxed paper lined baking sheet. Refrigerate or let cool until firm. Enjoy with your favorite cup of tea!

If refined sugar is a problem, there are other options. These days, there are many choices among sweeteners. Consider changing to another form of sugar that is less processed. Some possibilities are rapidura, which is cane sugar in its least processed form. It has a strong molasses/maple taste, which is good for some recipes. It can be used 1:1 as sugar. Sucanat is another form of sugar cane that can be substituted, along with the old favorites: maple syrup, honey, molasses and also brown rice syrup. You may have to experiment with your recipes to find the sugar that works in combination with the other ingredients.

What about artificial sweeteners? Those are toxic and Shelowitz makes no bones about it. We are better off eating refined sugar unless one is diabetic, she believes strongly. Artificial sweeteners can cause problems that mimic multiple sclerosis and lupus symptoms. They contribute to insomnia because of the way they mess with our serotonin levels. Among folks diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome or fibro-myalgia, it is very common to find that they have been using a lot of these artificial sweeteners.
The evening before, a private cooking client of Shelowitz’s wanted a dessert with dried fruit. “I thought, hmmm…..then we started assembling ingredients and, pretty soon, we were cooking up some dried apricots with apples and pears. This ended up as a soft pudding to which we added cashew cream.”
The recipe and a few others courtesy of Shelowitz seem like the perfect place to close. Bon appetit.