My history with Yogurt
Since, well, for as long as I can remember Chandra and I have gone through about 1 - 1.5 kg of yogurt on average each week. Thats 2-3 tubs. It's a staple in our household. It makes a quick snack, solid breakfast, or quick meal if we need. Plus, for the longest time, it was pretty much some of the only dairy I would eat, aside from cheese.
It started with island farms fruit yogurts (this is waaaaay back). If you havn't had one before, they're an EXTREMELY delicious and decadent treat. Thick, creamy, deliciously sweet. I would eat that over iced cream any day. I still would, hands down. Here's the problem, they're REALLY high in added sugar. They're also kind of pricier than regular yogurt - that is also an issue to me, so we switched.
We'd buy whichever yogurt we could find onsale at the time that met our criteria. Usually non-fat, always sweetened, and most of the time flavoured. We'd always look at the ingredients:
- honey > sugar > aspartame > sucralose (this stuff will kill Chandra, she gets violently ill eating it).
- vanilla + fruit > vanilla > fruit > plain
- Cheap >> all the other criteria
When Chandra and I lived in Lamont, we started our movement to more natural/wholesome eating. The movement was not just as part of her job at the time, but also just something both of us wanted - we had a pair of real sweet tooths, and we had been eating a lot of restaurant food. We had our first garden, cooked more, shopped better...
On a side note, I gained weight in Lamont because we had less access to the things we loved (sports & yoga were four hour endeavors 1 hour drive + 2 hour workout + 1 hour drive; friends were 4 hour minimum endeavors; running was brutally awful along that highway unless I drove to the park, which made it a 2 hour minimum). We were also stressed to the nines, so we took to video games to fill the voids and destress. Bad idea, but that's probably a different story.
Our yogurt of choice became an astro, balkan style, vanilla yogurt - plain if I was making a curry or something that called for it. It was, and probably is still a solid choice for yogurt. It has active bacterial cultures, it's sweetened with honey, it doesn't use gelatin or pectin, and the fat content made me eat less of it (good thing, really, I can really pound back yogurt).
Bringing us to today, we've finally been able to swtich from sweetened yogurt to plain yogurt. It tookme like 20 years, but who's counting.
Here is some of the things we use it for on a regular basis:
-Served with fruit, nuts (previously granola), and various spices for a snack/breakfast. IE - fruit, raisins, cinnamon, dash of honey, and pecans; or blueberries, walnuts, bananna.
-Couple spoonfuls in middle of night if I wake up too hot to cool down (Or if I'm hungry at all @ night really. Don't know why, but this is what my body craves in the nighttime hours. Grapes will also do in a pinch, but they're not quite as effective)
-As part of a dressing for fruit salad - Tsp lime juice, yogurt, 1/2 tsp curry, and slivered almonds (Really epic. So good. Seriously.)
-In butter chicken, some sauces...etc
-In smoothies. My favorite right now is Blueberries, coconut milk, dash of yogurt, and 1 raw egg. Also good is yogurt, almond butter, banana, coconut milk (or regular milk for a thinner smoothie) and unsweetened cocoa powder.
I would also like to try making Labneh, but not as much as this recipe calls for. That might be a little excessive. When I do, I'll season it up and let you know how it turns out and what I did with it. I just bought some cheesecloth to try it.
Here are some things that I've noticed about my yogurt since making this switch:
- The flavour of plain yogurt is reasonably consistent from brand to brand when you're comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Some might be more or less sour than others, but for the most part, they taste like yogurt. If being used in a smoothie, the flavour difference really doesnt amount to a whole lot (not that my opinion really counts for much).
- Texture is now much more important to me now than it previously had been. Thicker yogurt being typically more desireable to me than the thinner stuff. I would like to note that fat content can make a good guideline (3% thicker than Fat free, 10% thicker than 3%) its not always an exact indicator of what the texture will be, so you may have to shop around a little bit.
These two yogurts, for example were 3.5% and 4.0% respectively. The one on the left, with the lower fat content, tended to be thicker and generally more consistent throughout a container than the one found on the right. I find this more condusive to the snacks/meals...etc. The one on the right worked pretty good for smoothies.
-There are different kinds of ways that the bacteria is described: some just say "Active bacteria Cultures", some list the strains...etc. Some active yogurts are great for keeping you going, if ya know what I mean. Others, just make a mess of things. I don't know the ins and outs, but if you eat yogurt, and are really gassy it may be worth switching to see if it helps smooth things out. I know the pendulum swings both ways on this, some yogurts will keep me pretty regular, others can make needing the bathroom an urgent matter. Since I work on site, the latter really isn't an option for me.
-I know that there are yogurts which advertise "14 day challenges" or "30 day challenges", but I don't think I've found one that was THAT worth it. I don't particularly like being bloated all the time, and that's what these lead to. I tried a couple just to see if I could do it - I couldn't. If your yogurt isn't working for you, switch - I'm nearly positive you could find one with similar texture/flavour and not all the headache. There is, afterall an entire wall of the stuff.
Anyways, I think I've settled on the one shown above and on the left until something better comes along (conveniently priced at a point a little less expensive than $3/500g - on par with most other yogurts). I'll let you know if I find anything else in my travels.
Pat
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