A Dip For All Fruits

It's not every day I'm asked to make a fruit platter (with dip). But on the occasion of my future-lil-sister-in-law Erica's high school graduation party, I was honored to have been. The fruit was simple enough of course, as I chopped away at a bunch of honeydew and cantaloupe and arranged them on the platter with a myriad of strawberries, blueberries and Michigan cherries. I even added a little height and character to the platter by taking one of the honeydew rinds and carving an “09” into it (like a pumpkin) and standing it up as a backdrop for the fruit.

It looked pretty so far, but needed a dip to make the fruit have a little more pizzazz. I had a perfect bowl for the dip – my hollowed out half of cantaloupe – and I set to work on the dip by investigating the fridge. I gathered together vanilla yogurt, vanilla extract, honey, pure orange oil (you could just use orange zest) and a lemon. I used about twelve ounces of stirred vanilla yogurt and added a tablespoon of vanilla extract, the juice and zest of half a lemon, a few drops of orange oil (or the zest of half an orange) and two-ish tablespoons of honey. Of course with sweetness and saltiness, I always add to taste and never to blind measurements. I think I went a little over two tablespoons and it was lightly sweet.

I stirred it all together and found it to be a little thin, which led me to try thickening it with a little whipped cream cheese and skim milk, beat into the yogurt mixture. The dip came out fine, but I don't believe the cream cheese added much to the flavor and it didn't even thicken it all that much.

Still, the final product was cool, smooth, tangy and sweet and tasted very nice with all of the fruits. And it looked absolutely fantastic in the cantaloupe bowl I created and centered in the middle of the platter. I think the fruit eaters at the party were pleased by the dip, and I saw many coming back for more. Success, for me, since it came off the top of my head.

The thinness/cream cheese issue left me a little dissatisfied. I think next time I would plan ahead more and strain the yogurt over a paper-towel-lined strainer and bowl overnight in the fridge. This would eliminate much of the water in the yogurt and create a great thickness and concentration of flavor, almost like a soft cheese. That's my vision for next time, but for this time, it still seemed to work quite well.

Yogurt Headache

I hear yogurt is healthy. I read in Men's Health several years ago that one of the keys to burning the all-important stomach fat is daily yogurt eating. Something about complex cultures – beats me. I think it could be true, but maybe just since yogurt looks and feels more filling than it is. Or I suppose it could be a happy medium between the scientific and the psychological.

Whether yogurt is or is not good for us, it's important to differentiate what I consider healthy yogurt from non-healthy. Yogurt can be very high in fat and it can be fat free, and taste nearly similar. Again, it's the crazy cultures, but I see no reason why not to buy the fat free variety. I can't see how eating the equivalent of a complex custard daily is gonna help along the waistline.

Then there's the sugar part – that's the trickier part. Every yogurt seems to have a lot of sugars in it, making most yogurts more suspect on the health aspect. Some just are too sweet, but even plain, non-fat yogurts have quite a bit of sugar. Still, nearly any flavor will have more sugar than a plain variety. Fruit helps flavor without as much corn syrup, but often fruit is placed into an already-sweet yogurt. The best would be plain yogurt with as little sugar as possible, with fruit mixed in. Of course if you're fine with plain, that's got to be the healthiest, despite still having those sugars buried beneath the taste.

The best one I've found? Dannon Light & Fit. Ok so it uses a little artificial sweetener, but at 60 calories, 0 grams of fat, more potassium than sodium and only 7 grams of sugars (some of which have to come from the fruit inside), it's the best-tasting healthy yogurt and healthiest, good-tasting yogurt that I've found. So why make it a part of my breakfast every day? Hey, Men's Health could be right. If not, at least I did the research to find the healthiest yogurt out there first. So the downside can't be bad.

The Fiber Slide Warning

I am a big touter of fiber, and one of my biggies is Fiber One Original cereal, containing in each half-cup serving 57% of your daily fiber and hardly a pittance of sugar or fat along with a bonus of some key vitamins, minerals and protein. It is a breakfast worth eating. But you needn't go further than the back of the box to get other great uses – in salads, in trail mix, even ground up and used as bread crumbs. All great ways to get some of that concentrated, healthy fiber in you (or others).

But you've heard that from me before. Now here's my warning. Don't let the richness of this one Fiber One product fool you. It is not that deep a brand. Its other cereals all have lower fiber contents per CUP than the Original does in HALF a cup. They all also have higher sugar content and less other redeeming traits. Even despite all this, they still go ahead and advertise the fiber content on the front of the box in the same manner as the original, leading you to believe it is a per half cup serving rather than a per cup serving.

Then there are the breakfast bars, with 35% per little bar, which are high fiber for their size, but are still pretty high in sugar. Those bars and the cereals are okay but not great. The truly lousy products, which are allowed to slide only by virtue of being under the Fiber One name, are the yogurts and the pop tarts. Each have pretty low fiber content relative to the Original and still advertise fiber in the same place to remind consumers of the product it's piggybacking upon. The yogurts are not even worth it, as they seemed like nothing more than a yogurt with some fiber powder (Bene-fiber) mixed in. Small, expensive, sugary and unexciting. The pop tarts, I believe, are actually a ploy. They don't even have that much fiber, at 25%, but taste pretty cardboard-ish and have the relative misfortune of carrying many of the same other nutritional characteristics as traditional Kellogg’s Pop Tarts. Not good. Plus they're a rip-off.

So if you're looking for some great ways to add fiber to your life, grab a box of the Original Fiber One and do something creative with it – remember, a little goes a long way. Don't bother allowing the other Fiber One products to slide on the fiber and the other peripherals nutritionals by grabbing on the coattails of the Original.

Greekly & Godly

Sometimes the most innovative foods you can discover are some of the oldest and most classic. That is why you need to discover Greek yogurt if you have not already. This stuff will blow your mind with its taste, health, cost and versatility. And even if you have discovered it already, perhaps I can add a few tips to advance your repertoire even further.

So what did I promise you? Taste. Greek yogurt is like a thicker, creamier and slightly less tangy version of plain yogurt. It doesn't seem to have as much of the “cultures” taste, yogurt's usual twang that sometimes is aversive to people, especially when used in their food. Yes, so Greek yogurt is a little milder, and along with the added richness, turns yogurt into an ideal culinary ingredient. Almost more like a mild sour cream than a mild yogurt.

You scream, “but you said this would be healthy, right?” And it is! There is a full fat version and a skim version available at most stores now, and the nonfat version is incredible. The full fat version is actually not even that unhealthy, but when there's a nonfat version that is better than the full fat version, I would rather just ignore the latter. But nonfat can be a misnomer or still be hiding other negative health aspects. Nope. Not here. It is completely free of all fat and simultaneously only has a small amount of sugar in it -- far far less sugar than in skim milk or other nonfat plain yogurts. And it is also very low in sodium as well. So buy the nonfat version and go crazy -- it's nearly guilt free. And while I'm mentioning “buying,” I'll discuss cost. It's cheap! Less expensive than sour cream or regular yogurt. So go even crazier!

“Go crazy,” you ask. “But how the heck do I use this stuff?” Well if you haven't gotten my hints thus far, you can start by using this how you would want to use sour cream. Put a dollop in your soups, have some with tacos or burritos, use it as the base for a French onion dip. Heck, you could eat it on a cracker! But it goes farther than that. You can use it to make some Greek specialties like the famous tzatziki cucumber-lemon-yogurt sauce, but that is what Greek yogurt is known for. I'm about what it's not known for as well. Use it to thicken sauces and soups that need a little extra rich flavor and texture but no extra fat. Or use it to fill some wontons, mixed with scallion and shredded, cooked chicken. Or as my friend suggested recently, use it as a lower fat white cream sauce base with pasta. Or you can mix it with lemon juice, or chipotle, or basil, or cilantro, or even chocolate in a sweet application and get creative to your heart’s content.

But you want the absolute best use for Greek yogurt? Concentrate it and turn it into the best nonfat cheese you can imagine. All you need to do is line a colander with a layer or two of paper towel and place the colander over a large bowl. Empty a container of Greek yogurt into the paper towel and cover it. Leave it at least 24 hours in the fridge. What will result is an incredibly thick version of the yogurt, as all the water seeps out overnight, so much so that it is like a rich, soft cheese. You can crumble it on salads, dip pitas into it, spread it on a sandwich, even top bread rounds and toast it under the broiler (yes, it even browns like cheese). It tastes terrific and allows you to cut out fat and sodium in so many places and still allow for a similar, if not better, replacement for cheese, sour cream, spreads, dips and the like.

This is a food fit for the Greek goddesses and gods. And who knows, they may have created it!