Turtle Mountain Dairy-Free Products
www.turtlemountain.comFood trends run in cycles, and American consumers can be very fickle – one year’s hottest fad is entirely likely to be next year’s old news. But we’ve noticed one current trend that appears to have some staying power – the use of coconut milk as a replacement for milk and cream in everything from yogurt to ice-cream sandwiches. Within the past year, we’ve already sampled very good coconut-milk ice cream from an Oregon company called Coconut Bliss and the marvelous frozen confections created locally by NadaMoo!. Most recently, we tried a full line of coconut-milk products from a Eugene, Ore., outfit called Turtle Mountain. It offers half-gallons of coconut milk, individual servings of yogurt, pints of ice cream, ice-cream sandwiches, chocolate-coated ice-cream bars, and frozen fruit bars, all under the So Delicious and Purely Decadent labels. Some of the coconut milks and all of the ice-cream treats and fruit bars are sweetened with agave syrup, making them lower in fat and calories and lower on the glycemic index than dairy treats sweetened with sugar.
After checking out the entire product line, I don’t think I would ever develop a taste for the So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk or any of the flavored yogurts, but the vanilla coconut milk works fine for coffee and cereal. On the dessert end of the spectrum, the So Delicious coconut-milk ice-cream sandwiches and chocolate-covered ice-cream bars are marvelous little guilt-free treats, as are the smooth and creamy fruit bars, especially the orange passion fruit. The Purely Decadent dairy-free ice-cream pints come in eight delicious flavors, offering the rich, satisfying mouthfeel of premium ice cream and the righteous enjoyment of a low-fat, low-calorie treat that won’t cause a spike in your blood sugar. Look for So Delicious and Purely Decadent dairy-free products at Whole Foods Markets and Wheatsville Co-op.
This article appears in June 12 • 2009.