'Healthy' Ice Cream!

With my diet being sugar-free, dairy-free and gluten-free one of the hardest foods to find for me to eat is ice cream.  It's not easy to be constantly telling my daughter no as we pass by ice cream trucks.  Luckily she understands when we go to birthday parties and we bring our own dessert.  At certain stores you can find ice cream made from coconut milk or almond milk and sweetened with agave or cane sugar.  Cane sugar or evaporated cane juice is different than 'sugar' and it will be labelled as 'cane sugar'.   It is the same sugar that comes from the cane stalk but is less processed and therefore the body recognizes it as food and not as a toxin and doesn't do harm to the body.  But still too much does spike the blood sugar and cause a flood of insulin which puts stress on the pancreas and digestive system.  So even too much of a healthy thing is still too much.  I test for both sugar and cane sugar as food sensitivities so it can be decided if your body can handle the cane sugar or not.  Luckily for my daughter and I, we can.  

So that brings us to 620 Manhattan Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11222, across the street from my Brooklyn office, to an artisanal ice cream shoppe, Van Leeuwen, where they make  delicious ice cream using organic cane sugar.  They have flavors that use dairy and they have others that use coconut cream and cashew milk.  The vegan flavors include: 

DARK CHOCOLATE

SALTED CARAMEL 

CHOC CHIP COOKIE DOUGH 

MINT CHIP

COFFEE BEAN

BANANA NUT

PEANUT BUTTER CHOC CHIP

MATCHA GREEN TEA

My daughter had a scoop of the chocolate and I had a scoop of the coffee and it was delish!

They have 3 trucks in NYC that if you go to their website you can find the locations of for they change daily.  They also have trucks in LA.  They have 8 shops with 5 in NYC and 3 in LA.  They have 3 in Brooklyn (Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Boerum Hill) and 2 in Manhattan (West Village, East Village).  So check it out and enjoy!  Happy summer!