Vitamin F: Homemade Coffee Creamer

Holy moly, I am so excited about this post.
Don't you just LOVE your morning coffee?
Do you have a favorite coffee creamer?
Have you ever read the ingredient list on your creamer?
If you look, you'll find things like palm oil, sugar, corn syrup, dipotassium phosphate, salt, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, sodium castenate, artifical color & flavor......
Do I really need to go on?
It's called coffee creamer, but it usually a non dairy product full of nasty oils, flavors & sweeteners. It's pure junk!!

This all came about because I weaned myself off of the "junk" and resorted to a splash of milk or black coffee. Well, this doesn't work for Greg because he likes the flavored stuff, so I started buying "Natural Bliss" by Coffee-mate. It doesn't have any of the nasty stuff in it, it's simply cream, sugar & flavor.....BUT it has full fat cream and "natural flavoring" that tastes really fake.
After reading the ingredient list on the "Natural Bliss", I was like...."why the heck don't I just make it myself, it seems pretty dang easy." So I did it and OH MY! It's amazing.
My goal for making my own creamer was to have it taste great, not all artificial-ly AND to have it be low fat. It was a complete success.

For my milk product, I used ultra-pasteurized 2% milk. You can find this at most grocery stores and the benefit to this, is that it lasts longer without going bad. Ultra-pasteurized simply means that it was heated to a higher temperature than most milk is to ensure that ALL the bacteria is killed. The expiration date on ultra pasteurized usually goes out at least a month. I thought this would be best, in case I didn't use the creamer quickly, it would have a longer life.
For example, I bought milk today 2/24 and it expires on 3/26.
(If you have a problem with dairy, feel free to sub in your "milk" product, rice/almond/soy/etc).

Please use GOOD vanilla! No imitation! Trust me! You can't imitate good vanilla.

Here's the simple recipe:

2 cups ultra-pasteurized 2% milk
2 tablespoons honey
1.5 teaspoons vanilla (ONLY THE GOOD STUFF! NO ARTIFICIAL/IMITATION!)

Bring milk & honey to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Once it comes to a simmer, remove from heat and add vanilla. Cool and pour into a refrigerator-friendly container. My favorite is a mason jar. Enjoy with your coffee.

NUTRITION FACTS:
Serving Size: 2 tablespoons
Calories 10
Fat 0.3 g
Cholesterol 1.2 mg
Sodium 6.3 mg
Carbs 1.3 g
Protein 0.5 g

If you want your creamer to be creamier, sub half of the milk for half & half for only an additional 6 calories and 0.5 gram of fat.

Here's the comparable nutrition info for "CoffeeMate French Vanilla"
Serving Size 2 tablespoons
Calories 80
Fat 4 g
Carbs 10 g
(The fat-free version has the same # of calories/carbs)

Looks like all that crap they put in there to imitate milk, didn't work out so well.

Finally, the comparable nutrition for "CoffeeMate Natural Bliss Vanilla"
Serving Size 2 tablespoons
Calories 70
Fat 3 g
Carbs 5 g