Not Your Sugar Mama’s (NYSM) has opened the doors at its new store/chocolate factory located in the Tisbury Market Place in Vineyard Haven. For those of you who may not be familiar with NYSM, it is RAW chocolate which is totally different from the chocolate in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
NYSM’s chocolate is gluten free, sugar free, and every ingredient used is pronounceable. They use organic ingredients like herbs, blue green algae and agave (instead of sugar). The best part is that the chocolate tastes amazing, and there’s a bonus too, it’s actually good for you. Read my earlier post on NYSM to find out more about the raw chocolate and how NYSM got started.
On the outside, NYSM looks like a interesting place to check out. Inside, the walls are a bright shade of blue, and there are bamboo floors and cool bamboo fixtures. It’s bright and airy and just plain fun.
It’s obvious the NYSM’s owners, Bennett Coffey and Kyleen (Ky) Keenan are enjoying their business. I guess you have to have fun when you’re making and selling chocolate that is good for you!
More Than Just Good (for you) Chocolate
With their store open, you are able to get the chocolate they’re known for and a whole lot more. I have to mention you can also get NYSM chocolate at Alley’s, Cronigs, Black Sheep, Edgartown Meat & Fish, and at a number of other places too. When I walked in, I was immediately greeted by a display of chocolate treats for sale.
There were Fudgy Brownies which were indeed fudgy and super tasty. The amazing thing is that there was no flour or sugar in them, instead they use Morning Glory Farm eggs and chickpeas, yes chickpeas as the base! As I ate it with enthusiasm, I felt no guilt, which is a pleasant change.
There were Superfood Mini Scones which are chock full of oats, raspberries, pecans and more – so delicious, and there were various fruits, like elderberry, and nuts, like macadamia covered in NYSM chocolate too. I can’t forget to mention the Raw Balls — soon to have the new name of Cookie Balls — because they actually taste like cookie dough, but are made with none of those naughty ingredients of typical cookie dough.
Don’t forget to grab a couple of NYSM chocolate bars while you’re in the store. The Be Fresh is still my favorite out of the four flavors which also include Be Cool, Be Original, and Be Sexy. I love the hint of lemon from the lemon verbena and the vanilla in it. Look for new flavors in the Fall.
So, now that you have a serious hankering for some chocolate, there’s more to tempt you with. You also grab a cup of Chilmark Coffee Company coffee (another local favorite we recently profiled), and of course there are great accouterments like agave and coconut palm sugar for your joe. In the mood for something else? There’s also tea, iced tea, and Superfood Hot Chocolate (made from NYSM hot chocolate mix) that you can also have iced so it’s more like super chocolate milk, yum.
There’s also the Dandy, which is made with extracts of roasted barley, rye, chicory, dandelion and beet root – their signature drink — which is a healthy alternative to coffee, which tastes amazing, even though there are some crazy ingredients in it. Not that I think coffee is unhealthy, I live on the stuff, but there are some who don’t feel the same way.
There are definitely some fun things to try at NYSM. When you go, hope you’re feeling adventurous because some people need to be opened minded about the ingredients and just try things. I myself was a little skeptical because who would ever think that beet root could taste yummy, but Bennett has developed some recipes that will make such ingredients work. I don’t know how she does it!
NYSM has brought sweet treats that are good for you to the masses, well at least to us and about 57 other places that carry NYSM. I imagine that we are going to see their chocolate in more and more places. Marrying tasty with health like they have, really shows that you can be good to yourself and good to your body.
For more about Not Your Sugar Mamas, please visit their website: Not Your Sugar Mamas – Raw Chocolate Made on Martha’s Vineyard.
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