Monday, February 13, 2006

update for yogurt lovers

There are three yogurts in my life.

FAGE Total 0% Greek Strained Yogurt: "It is a live yogurt and being completely fat-free, is perfect for your waistline too." That quote is from the tub. How are those related? And I love the use of the gerund being. And the archaic "waistline" reference . . . I know mzn is crazy for whole milk yogurt, and FAGE whole milk yogurt is divine. But I was brought up on fat free yogurt and so while I can taste the difference, fat free doesn't taste like any kind of compromise to me. Roden insists on whole milk yogurt too.

Crowley's Low Fat Yogurt: A kind of "local" brand from, town of my birth, Binghamton, NY. Rich and dense even in its low fattyness. My mother attributes my love of dairy to her drinking whole unpasturized milk from the dairy across the road from her house when she was pregnant with me. Crazy 1970s logic.

Danon Fat Free: Another way to get a similar creamy firm texture is to set this cheap and runny yogurt on a folded paper towel for 10-20 minutes. The paper towel will wick away the watery liquid and leave you with condensed yogurt, which will roll right off the paper towel if you lift it by one corner. If you haven't done this yourself, you may not believe me . . . but it totally works. I keep this around because it's cheap and easy to find, but its an inferior product, no doubt.

Note to lindy, who lists Roden's Good Food from the Middle East on her blog and recently celebrated a birthday, and mzn, who also celebrated a birthday, with ice cream. I too am an Aquarius and the cookbook was a birthday gift.

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7 Comments:

Blogger mzn said...

Happy birthday!

I love FAGE yogurt, all kinds. Unfortunately, you can't get it where I live (unless there are Greek markets I haven't discovered, and I confess I haven't searched them out). Otherwise I go back and forth between whole and lowfat. And I drain yogurt as you suggest all the time. If you do this in a coffee filter overnight you get something like very sour cream cheese.

9:08 PM  
Blogger zoe p. said...

Coffee filter. Brilliant!

9:40 AM  
Blogger the chocolate doctor מרת שאקאלאד said...

Happy Birthday zp!

I hope that at least on this joyous occasion you will allow yourself some whole milk yogurt, and enjoy it in good health with my fond wishes.

Did they even *have* fat-free yogurt in the 70's? Isn't low-fat Albigensian enough?

2:10 PM  
Blogger zoe p. said...

to clarify for the chocolate lady, i think a yogurt time line would looks something like this:

1970s: Irene (aka mom) drinks dairy milk. little or no yogurt is consumed by zp.

1980s: Irene feeds children low fat yogurt. known, in our house as logurt, but not because it was low fat. because my brother couldn't say "y," but perhaps this had an effect . . .

1990s: zp consumes low fat yogurt independently. and hates, for some reason, the flavor of stonyfield.

2000s: zp learns to strain yogurt.

9:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy birthday, an'at.
Yes Fage.
Yes Wholemilk, unless it is Fage. All Fage is good-even 0.
I entirely agree.
If you can, try some goatmilk yogurt; I think it is really kickass. They generally have it at Stamboulis, in the Strip, I think. Little bit of honey, a few walnuts.....

4:15 PM  
Blogger Amos_thePokerCat said...

The Big Bird (i.e. Giant 'Egle), at least the one in Cranberry, has several varieties of Fage. They also had goat and water buffalo yogurt.

For mzn, if a chain grocery in PIT has Fage, I imagine that it should be fairly widely available in Milwaukee too.

Peterb of Tea Leaves did the Good Eat's hot pad yogurt machine. Lots of detail on how to build it. Not much detail on how resultant yogurt turned out. Especially compared to Fage.

I have been meaning to sit down with a spectrum of Fage yogurt and working backwards from the nutritional info to reverse engineer the whole Fage.

11:28 PM  
Blogger zoe p. said...

hi there amos. i too find it hard to imagine that the Giant Eagle would be a pathbreaker in imported yogurts unavailable in other metropolitan areas.

maybe Wisconsin has some tough restrictions on imported dairy, like, you know, France?

i left pretty much these same yogurt thoughts at Tea Leaves and now that you mention it, mzn might enjoy the cooking posts there, especially the Chinese home cooking. Tea Leaves is down under my food in Pittsburgh links, in the sidebar.

i used to trust their restaurant reviews in full faith, now i'm thinking they're a little dated. for example, i found Christos comparable to an old fashioned Long Island diner, but no better.

9:23 AM  

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