Easy Herbed Yogurt Dip, and another Chobani Greek Yogurt Giveaway

Lately I have been craving healthy food.  

I don't know if I overdid it with birthday celebrations last month, or if I indulged in one too many brownies, but overall I need to lighten my load.  In case you don't catch my drift, what I am really saying is I think I need to shed a few pounds.  I used to be an avid runner, working out at least 4 times a week, and I felt fit and full of energy.  When I worked out regularly, I could eat whatever I wanted - cakes, chocolate, ice cream - and not really feel any guilt because I knew I would easily burn off those indulgent calories.  But with workouts on the decline and sweet treats on the rise, I don't feel fit, I don't have as much energy, and I don't like it one bit.  

Time to whip myself into shape and get back the healthy balance that I loved.     

I don't know how you do it, but when I really want to overhaul my eating, I turn to a plant-based diet.  I generally love all vegetables, but they take center stage when I want something healthy.  Unfortunately, I wasn't born with a cute pink nose and two floppy ears so I don't really enjoy munching on raw, unadorned veggies.  Instead, I make delicious salads dressed up with avocados, kalamata olives or figs, I roast sweet potatoes and beets, and I munch on crispy kale chips.  I am also a sucker for any sort of veggie dip especially since it is great to eat for a snack and I can take it to work.

Sometimes veggie dips can be deceivingly unhealthy, so I wanted to make an Herbed Yogurt Dip that would be low-cal and low-fat, delicious, and quick and easy to make.  Naturally, I turned to plain non-fat Chobani Greek Yogurt for the base, since it has an amazing tang that pairs well with vegetables, and is high in protein.  

I flavored the dip with some of my favorite herbs, a little lemon juice and garlic, as well as a small amount of goat cheese and extra virgin olive oil for richness.  The cheese also contributes some extra protein, while the extra virgin olive oil is a good source of monounsaturated fats.      

The amount of parsley that equals a 'handful.'

Berry Frozen Yogurt with Lemon Sugar and Lavender Cream, and Chobani Greek Yogurt Giveaway

If you were to ask me - what food turns a bad day into a good day? - I would immediately respond with two answers: either Starbucks or frozen yogurt.  It seems my days are turned around by extremes of either hot or cold.  Now, I fully realize that neither a latte nor a frozen treat is really considered a 'food,' but that doesn't stop me from soothing myself with either after a particularly long and trying day.  Actually, there is not much that will deter me from getting a latte or a frozen yogurt any day.  In case you haven't realized it, I like to treat myself to my favorite things as often as I possibly can.  Does this make me spoiled?

Spoiled or not, I love frozen yogurt, but actually I just love yogurt... period.  Especially Greek yogurt, I literally cannot get enough; in fact, my co-workers used to make fun of me because they seemed to think all I ate was yogurt!  (No, this was not some sort of strange diet, I just love taking yogurt to work for lunch.)  Well, the joke is on them, because Greek yogurt is healthy and tastes incredible so they are really the ones missing out.  I love to eat plain yogurt topped with sliced almonds and fruit, drizzled with a little honey, or I swirl in a little jam or lemon curd to jazz it up. 

I think I got addicted to frozen yogurt (and Starbucks for that matter...) after moving out to California and trying frozen yogurt from Golden Spoon, and then I fed my habit by visiting every other fro-yo spot within a 10-mile radius of my apartment.  Most places had every flavor imaginable, from coconut to rootbeer to taro, but my go-to choices were always the fresh fruit flavors.  I tend to love more tropical fruits like mangoes or papayas, but a good strawberry, blackberry, or raspberry is simply incomparable. 

Fresh Berries with Limoncello and Lemon-Honey Yogurt

So, do you remember how I said there were two desserts with berries that I really wanted to share with you?  Well, you can see the first one in my most recent post, and this is the second one.  And trust me, just because I am posting it second, doesn't mean it is not first-rate in taste.  This was soooo good.  As in, I easily ate three portions of it without even noticing it, good.  After trying this just once, I plan to put it on my regular rotation for dinner parties or evenings with friends, and I have a sneaking feeling you might do the same after trying it yourself. 

I thought I should share this with you on this lovely Sunday morning, since it was  a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday that I made it.  To be precise, it was exactly two weeks ago, on Sunday, May 9th... Mother's Day.  Now, I wish I could say that I made this for my lovely, wonderful mother on that particular Sunday; but alas, I am more than 2,000 miles away from any immediate family.  So on Mother's Day, I woke up to a slightly gray, cloudy morning feeling lonely and missing my mom and family.  I lay there feeling sorry for myself for a little while (cue the world's tiniest violin playing the world's saddest song), and then I got up and went into the kitchen.  I made myself a cup of tea and surveyed the options for breakfast.  That left me uninspired and still feeling blue.  So naturally, I grabbed a stack of cookbooks and crawled back into bed. 

I don't really know what it was about paging through the recipes, but I immediately started feeling less lonely.  Maybe because cooking and eating is generally a communal experience?  Probably more likely because my main associations of food and cooking, and my most fond memories of eating, are with family and loved ones.

In any case, I was paging through one of Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa cookbooks (don't we all love them?), and then I saw it: this beautiful dish with berries was calling out to me like a siren.  The fog of my self-pity lifted (thank goodness), and I recalled that I had just bought some amazing organic strawberries and mulberries from the farmer's market the day before.  The mulberries were an especially awesome find, since I rarely see them at the market, and these ones were ripe, with a deeply mellow, sweet taste.