yogurt « Healthy and Sane - A healthy lifestyle blog

Entries Tagged as 'yogurt'

Meatless Monday: you phyllo me?

July 20th, 2010 · 16 Comments · Cooking Light, The Best Light Recipe cookbook, breakfast, pizza, vegetarian meal, yogurt

Hehe, I couldn’t help myself with that title. Dork alert.

Highlights:

- I can’t stay out of the kitchen for too long. Last night I made a recipe that’s been on my list for a whole year. Yes, this one is from July 2009 Cooking Light issue – phyllo pizza with feta, basil and tomatoes (recipe here). It sounded (and looked!) delicious so I thought this would be a perfect dinner to make on a meatless Monday. Now here is the kicker – have you ever worked with phyllo? It was crazy. The sheets of dough were SO thin and they were definitely sticking together and breaking the second I touched them. The recipe said to use one sheet at a time and spray it with EVOO spray (layering it with the cheese mixture every 3 sheets). I fought it for a few rounds and then started grabbing 2-3 at a time. I was nervous that it would result in a rubbery final product but it was one of the best things I’ve made in a long time. So flaky and light, the cheese melted beautifully between all the layers and the super fresh tomatoes enhanced the dish even further. It tasted like a cheat meal but it wasn’t! I will never attempt to make something like this on a weeknight again (especially since work was waiting!) but I think I need to give phyllo another go. It’s too delicious not to.

- The chocolate chip cookies from yesterday’s post were from The Best Light Recipe cookbook. I made them as a thank-you for our neighbors but we never saw them so I brought them to work instead. This cookbook is amazing but I have to say this recipe was just okay. The cookies were a little too crunchy and actually got rock hard after a few hours on a plate. I had to warm them up to bring them to life. Warm cookies are always better!

- No gym today. I get too overwhelmed on Mondays. I feel like I’ll never meet my deadline. Hopefully it will all come together soon (I definitely made a lot of progress over the weekend).

That’s all I’ve got for today. Here is yesterday’s breakfast and lunch (snacks were unphotographed – imagine a breakfast cookie, a serving of almonds and 1 plum).

Cya tonight!

[Read more →]

Meeting Mr. Siggi

June 17th, 2010 · 20 Comments · breakfast, salad, sandwich, snacks, yogurt

I’m diving right into the highlight of my day yesterday (that I think you may be interested in) – meeting Mr. Siggi. Judith from Healthworks emailed a few of us Boston bloggers several weeks ago and said that he was going to be traveling around different clubs, doing siggi’s icelandic style yogurt tastings and of course answering any questions we may have. After work yesterday, I stopped by my house, grabbed my camera and hit up the Back Bay location of Healthworks.

It felt a little strange being there – like I’m invading something. I grabbed a vanilla yogurt from the lovely Amy (I have yet to taste it) and almost walked away. And then I collected myself and introduced myself to Mr. Siggi (fun fact: Siggi is his first name). He was super nice and really excited to answer any of my questions. The story of how he started his yogurt business was unlikely many other small business start-ups. He didn’t care for his job, he missed his yogurt from homeland Iceland, so he decided to make his own… and then eventually began selling it. Siggi’s yogurt is now sold nationally at every Whole Foods. How’s that for realizing the American dream? (Siggi has been in the US for only 8 years!).

So here are a few interesting things I learned about chatting with Siggi…

Siggi’s yogurt sources dairy from 6 small farms in New York. They have many standards, including those about humane treatment of animals. Although the dairy is not organic (it is cost-prohibitive at this point given the small scale of his operation), “the cows have names, not numbers.” Siggi spends some of his days visiting the farms.
The plain siggi’s yogurt tastes pretty close to the original Icelandic yogurt Siggi missed when moving to the US. The flavored varieties are a little more unique.
Siggi’s yogurt is a little more tart than most (in my opinion at least) because Greek and Icelandic-type yogurts are naturally tart but manufacturers add a lot of sugar to them to sweeten/mellow them out. Siggi’s yogurt uses just a touch of agave nectar and that’s why it is not sugar-laden.
They work on new flavors all the time. I’m volunteering to be a taste tester.
We talked about my Moldovian origin and about our Kefir. Apparently Kefir has a natural alcohol content. I’m going to google that soon.

Siggi was so nice. I LOVE meeting small business owners that are passionate about their business and do it right – without cutting corners at the expense of the consumer and our environment!

And here is a picture of me and Siggi – now you know what the man behind the yogurt looks like. He’s taaaaaaall.

Thank you, Siggi, for chatting with me… and thanks Judith for setting up this event. I think I may actually go to Healthworks today to work out. Imagine that!

Now onto yesterday’s eats…

BREAKFAST

The breakfast pizza is back!

Ww tortilla, almond butter, 2% TJ’s greek yogurt, 1/2 banana, raspberries, dried cherries and Kashi Golean cereal

A pizza slice, anyone?

I really love this breakfast. It’s so satisfying without being too filling.

LUNCH

Giant salad: mixed greens, grape tomatoes, radish, chickpeas, feta and Seta’s Mediterranean beet salad

This salad was fantastic -the beet salad was definitely the highlight. It came from the Copley Farmers market (Seta is there on Tuesdays) – the salad contains beets, dried mint, lemon juice and EVOO. Simple yet so flavorful. I LOVE beets!

WORKOUT

Yesterday’s workout was pretty random – I wanted to do a simple run outside but got bored so I turned around. I ran for a little over 20 minutes and then went to the gym and did 15 minutes of the elliptical there. I got my sweat on, so I guess that’s all I can ask of myself.

MID-AFTERNOON SNACK

Pita chips + Samira’s baba ganoush

Loved the crunch. I finished this container with a spoon after I ran out of the chips. Classy.

After meeting Mr. Siggi, I went to Joe’s to meet my co-workers for a few drinks. While there, I had one Hoegaarden and a glass of Cabernet + a little slice of margarita pizza.

I came home slightly buzzed and ready to chow down on more food.

DINNER

Dinner was based on this sandwich Shannon recently blogged about. You can’t really see the insides (bad blogger!) but this contains mustard, green apples, pickled green tomatoes and Cabot horseradish cheddar.

I know this sounds strange but it really is nicely balanced. Since the apples are only slightly sweet, they work well with the sour pickled tomatoes. I dare you to try it!

Dessert: cookies ‘n cream cheesecake bar

Plus 2 joe-joes (unpictured).

Phew – long post, fun day! Can you believe it’s Thursday already? I love love love Thursdays because of the Thursday Prudential farmers market. Plus I have really fun workouts planned for today. See you later, alligators. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway if you haven’t already.

[Read more →]

Dining solo + giveaway alert

May 26th, 2010 · 58 Comments · Uncategorized, baking, giveaways, product reviews, yogurt

It’s 10:40 and my poor husband is still working. We had plans to go out to dinner tonight and I was so excited about it that when he had to cancel, I briefly considered going out on my own. Have you ever done that? If so, how did you feel? If not, why not? Are you that social that you always have company?

I’ve dined solo many times, mostly while traveling. It’s actually kind of relaxing and weirdly empowering. I like bringing a book with me otherwise I just eat too fast. Tonight though, I ended up just throwing a quick dinner together. Hopefully we can go out together with Adam some other night, once his work crisis is averted.

Before we get to my average dinner and some other “business,” let me quickly announce the winner of the CSN Stores giveaway. I had 230 eligible entries, and the winner is…. #119 (Blair).

Sorry mom, you can’t cheat the system – you’re going to have to buy that crockpot yourself. Perhaps at cookware. com? Blair, please email me your address asap – elina@healthyandsane.com

Those of you who didn’t win, you will be happy to know that I have ANOTHER giveaway for you. Through my amazingly persuasive powers (kidding), one lucky reader will receive an Oikos package that will include – 4 free 5.3 oz coupons, 2 multipacks, and one 16 oz oikos coupon + an Oikos tote bag. I’m pretty excited about this one. I’m a giant fan of oikos and I want you to taste it (if you haven’t already) or get a little more addicted if you’ve already tried it.

So here are the rules (they are a bit different this time so read carefully):

1) Leave a comment on this post telling me a random fact about the dairy or organic industry. Here are a few resources for you:

My last post about the Stonyfield luncheon
The importance of organic farming (from the Stonyfield website)
The organic center

2) If you have a blog, let others know about the giveaway and link back to this post. If you don’t have a blog, tell someone about this giveaway and let me know that you’ve done so (after they enter the giveaway by commenting). You can also tweet about this giveaway *Either one earns you 2 bonus point* Please come back to this post and tell me you did so (twice).

I will announce the winner of this giveaway next Tuesday, June 1st.

All right, let’s talk about food. I had a good day of official healthy living checklist err checking.

BALANCED BREAKFAST – check!

I got a few Siggi’s coupons in my Healthworks swag bag. I’ve seen Siggi’s yogurt all over the blog world but to be honest never cared to buy it because it’s not organic. Like I said, I’m a pretty die hard oikos fan. I buy TJ’s european style organic yogurt too because oikos is so expensive. I kind of alternate between those 2. The free siggi’s coupons made me purchase a few and this morning I tried the grapefruit kind.

… with a zucchini spelt muffin + coffee

I was surprised at how thick siggi is. Almost thicker than greek yogurt. I liked that. What I didn’t like was that it was a bit grainy and I was definitely not a fan of the grapefruit flavor. I actually don’t even like grapefruit but for some reason I thought this yogurt would be awesome. Maybe it’s the pretty picture.

What I did like… all of these things:

Milk from grass fed cows (weather permitting)? No artificial stuff? Music to my ears. What’s also cool is that Siggi’s is lightly sweetened with agave nectar (the plain variety is not sweetened at all). And then there is this super cool label recycling option:

Love it! Let’s hope their plain yogurt tastes good because I really like what they’re doing here. I also plan on meeting Mr. Siggi soon and find out why his yogurt is not organic. Changing the world one yogurt at a time

SNACK #1 – check!

Chocolate cherry granola bar

MOVE FOR at least 20 MINUTES – check!

It was brutally hot in Boston today and I knew I would have a terrible run if I attempted it. So for the first time in months, I treadmilled it. It was actually a great 5 miler. I alternated between 5.5-7.0 mph at 0.5-2.5 incline. I cooled down with a 1/2 mile walk and stretched a bunch. Great workout!

BALANCED LUNCH