Monday, January 5, 2015

Literally Magic


My HUGE readership will be shocked by this but I don’t have any blog sponsors. Which is why you can take this product endorsement with good faith, knowing how much I love the product.






I think Trader Joe’s full fat plain greek yogurt is the stuff of the gods. It has gotten to the point that I have sort of elevated in my head into the magical territory.

It came into our lives when I was really sick last winter and had been for a while and my doctor finally cut loose with some antibiotics. I was thrilled for me but wondered to Andrew’s pediatrician whether it would do a number on his flora and I had a huge fear of yeast. She wasn’t too concerned but, probably to quiet me, said that he could take a probiotic or we could try yogurt on him. He was only 7-8 months old but her rationale was that it was cultured dairy, so lower in lactose, and since he had never had any reaction to anything in my diet, she wasn’t worried.

At this point, his solid ingestion could be measured in molecules so we figured he could spit out yogurt if he wanted- at least introduce good bacteria into his mouth. He liked it slightly more than other foods but he didn’t really eat much but my love affair with it began then. I used it to thicken up runny baby foods or cool down something that had been over heated. I liked that it was a nutritional gold mine, protein, vitamins and minerals, high in fat. I also, probably wrongly, began to correlate his lovely digestive health (regular, loose-yet- well-formed bowel movements) to his yogurt consumption and still give it a lot of credit to date.

It was a perfect nutritional addition to sweet or savory foods. Sweet potato with greek yogurt is like a tater and sour cream and blueberry and greek yogurt is like a cheesecake (well…). We started using it as sour cream for our taco night and the first solids I sent to daycare with A was black beans and yogurt. As he began to eat more of what we were eating we found we could use it to moderate spice level, for example adding it to spicy lettuce wrap mix to cool it down.

We get all sorts of comments at Grandma’s and at restaurants on how good A is with utensils. We started giving him his own bowl and spoon while he was being spoon-fed pretty early and yogurt was an awesome practice medium. The high viscosity gave him more time to figure out how to get it to his mouth. He can eat cereal in milk with a spoon now and that is because he graduated through eating cereal in yogurt and then over time thinning out the yogurt with milk.

This guy is hungrier these days than he was a s a newborn (probably not really) so having quick snacks is an imperitive. Yogurt is an awesome dip!





Pretzels, pea pods, etc. I feel better about the snack, it is more filling than the carb by itself and it slows him down a bit until we can figure out what to actually eat.
I seriously LOVE this stuff now. I could actually gush more; it is cheap, less tart than some of the mainstream brands and so so creamy.

The only downside here is that now I am snobbish to my 2 WW pt yoplaits. But for my baby’s healthy and full tummy (and my own saiety) I can probably live with that.







That is actually whipped cream. Also highly viscous, much less nutritious, but oh so delicious.





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2 comments:

Titanium Spork said...

Greek yogurt is fabulous stuff. Thanks to this info I will give it a whirl with Margot too. You know though that you can have Mommy yogurt and Andrew yogurt? The low-fat versions still have tons of protein and other good stuff. The Tillamook is really good and it is only 3 points.
And your kid is awesome at the table all around. Great manners and eating skills. A delightful dinner companion.

aeep said...

Sadly, it has ruined me. I find all of the other mainstream types to have off texture or tartness. And even TJ's LF doesn't work. This stuff must be perfectly tailored to my palette.

I just eat it now too and I guess can compensate the calories (WW pts) elsewhere. In theory.

The fridge at work has a collection of my rejected yogurts...should probably do something about that.