Saturday, July 12, 2008

They Ate It!

Popsicles

Last week, in my search for healthy snacks, I came across a spinach and strawberry Popsicle recipe. So, I tried it out. I blended equal amounts of strawberries and spinach together, then added three tablespoons of unsweetened applesauce and two tablespoons of local honey. As I was pouring the brownish liquid into six Popsicle molds, I thought to myself, "Gross, there is no way my girls will eat this."

They devoured them! Olivia ate every last bite of two of them. Lila has had one so far, but that's only because she makes such a mess, I limit her to one or two messy treats a week. I will definitely be making more of these Popsicles!

Homemade Yogurt

Since yogurt is a bit pricey here, and my mother in law has told me, more than once, that homemade yogurt is easy to make, I decided to try making my own. I used the first recipe on the page here. I used organic, plain yogurt with live cultures as a starter. After heating whole milk, cooling it a bit, and adding yogurt, I poured it all into a 1.5 quart corning ware bowl, put a glass lid on it and kept in my oven, heated to about 105 degrees (+/-), and left there for 3.5 hours.

The result was creamy plain yogurt, which I stirred and added a little bit of local honey to. Yum!!! Lila and I ate it for breakfast this morning. I did notice that some of the film I had removed, after cooling the milk, still found it's way into the yogurt, but, next time, I'll just run the mixture through a strainer.

Next time I make yogurt, I'm going to use some of the yogurt I make as a starter for my next batch, saving me money on buying a container of store-bought yogurt for use as a starter.

I must admit, I feel duped by the marketing of yogurt. Who knew it was SO easy to make yogurt? I can't believe it. I'm going to take my leftovers, add some pureed blueberries and fruit and make frozen yogurt Popsicles. I like to use small amounts of real maple syrup or honey to sweeten plain yogurt and I'm so happy to find an alternative to the ice cream sold at grocery stores here (which contains high fructose corn syrup, which I like to avoid). My girls will be in frozen yogurt heaven!

1 comment:

Angie said...

Yeah, those popsicles do not sound good. I have been planning on doing some frozen yogurt popsicles. I'll have to check into the homemade yogurt. I'm not sure if I'm up to that. Ashlyn would love it, though.