Deliciously Fat Free Line Now Includes Raspberry and Original Flavors

Johnstown, New York (January 17, 2012) – FAGE is expanding its line of luxuriously rich and creamy Total 0% yogurt with new flavors, including raspberry. FAGE Total 0% Raspberry features refreshingly ripe raspberries alongside delicious nonfat, authentic Greek strained yogurt.  In addition to Total 0% Raspberry, new Total 0% flavors include Strawberry, Cherry, Peach and Blueberry.  This is the first time FAGE’s original fruit flavors are available in the Total 0% option.

Defiantly decadent and full of flavor, this is a nonfat yogurt that doesn’t compromise on taste. It’s a pure, all natural indulgence without any of the guilt.

FAGE Total 0% is extraordinarily thick, made from raw skimmed cow’s milk.  In addition to the luscious exotic fruit combinations and honey introduced last year, this extraordinary yogurt is now matched with FAGE’s original fruit flavors to offer consumers a total of 10 delicious options.

Total 0% Raspberry: Ripe and refreshing raspberries are the perfect complement to the luxurious taste of FAGE Total 0%.

Total 0% Strawberry: Succulent strawberries combined with FAGE’s ridiculously thick yogurt make a fulfilling and tasty snack any time of day.

Total 0% Cherry: Juicy red cherries marry perfectly with FAGE’s plain extraordinary yogurt.

Total 0% Peach: Mouthwatering peaches paired with FAGE Total 0% make for a delightful dessert or snack anytime.

Total 0% Blueberry: Plump and sweet blueberries come together with FAGE Total’s rich and creamy non-fat yogurt to create the perfect treat.

The new FAGE Total 0% flavors are scheduled to roll out in select markets over the course of the next few months, and will be available nationwide soon. To learn more about the new FAGE Total 0% flavors as well as other great FAGE products, visit http://fageusa.com, follow FAGE at twitter.com/fageusa and find FAGE on Facebook.

About FAGE

FAGE is Greece’s leading yogurt company, producing milk, cheese and yogurt for customers worldwide.  Owned and strategically led by the Filippou family since its founding in 1926, it features traditional style Greek yogurt, known for its famous taste and texture.  FAGE first distributed its products in the United States in 1998.  FAGE’s United States plant in Johnstown, NY opened its doors in early 2008, officially making FAGE the first Greek company producing Greek yogurt in the country.  Select FAGE products are currently available in Greece, the United Kingdom, Italy, United States, Germany, and Cyprus, among 25 other countries. Additional information is available on the Company’s website, http://fageusa.com.

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Instructions:
•1 (10 oz) package frozen cut spinach, thawed
•1 (17 oz) container Fage 0% plain Greek yogurt
•1 package Frontier Simply Organic French Onion dip mix Various cut-up vegetables or Athenos whole wheat baked pita chips
Instructions:
•Place thawed spinach in a dish towel and squeeze out remaining water
•Continue process until spinach is dry
•Mix spinach with yogurt and soup mix until well blended.
•Serve with a variety of fresh cut-up vegetables or Athenos pita chips
Nutrition information per serving (calculated for dip only): Calories: 20, Carbohydrate: 2 g, Cholesterol: 0 mg, Dietary Fiber: 1 g, Fat: 0 g, Protein: 3 g, Saturated Fat: 0 g, Sodium: 97 mg, Sugar: 1 g

Orange You Cran-tastic? Muffins
PER SERVING (1/12th of recipe, 1 muffin): 147 calories, 0.5g fat, 233mg sodium, 32.5g carbs, 3g fiber, 16.5g sugars, 4.5g protein — PointsPlus® value 4*

A batch of homemade muffins should put smiles on your family members’ faces, whether they’re morning people or not…
Ingredients:
2 large oranges
2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 cup fat-free plain Greek yogurt (like the kind by Fage)
1/2 cup fat-free liquid egg substitute (like Egg Beaters Original)
2/3 cup granulated sugar (or HG Alternative!)
1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries, chopped

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with baking cups (foil ones work best) and spray baking cups with nonstick spray.

Using a fine grater, zest oranges into a bowl (you’ll need 1 tbsp.); set bowl aside.

Cut oranges in half. Over a mesh strainer, juice orange halves into a measuring cup until you have 3/4 cup juice. Discard oranges and set juice aside.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and ginger. Mix in 1 tbsp. orange zest. (If you like, save any remaining zest for another use.)

In another bowl, combine yogurt, egg substitute, and sugar. Add the 3/4 cup of juice from oranges and 1/2 cup water. Whisk to combine. Add wet mixture to flour mixture. Stir until just mixed and smooth. (Do not over-stir.) Sprinkle in dried cranberries (make sure they don’t stick together) and gently stir.

Evenly spoon batter into the lined cups of the muffin pan. Bake in the oven until tops are light golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 20 – 25 minutes. Enjoy!

MAKES 12 SERVINGS

HG Alternative! Cut calories and sugar by using an equal amount of Splenda No Calorie Sweetener (granulated) in place of the sugar. Then each muffin will have 110 calories, 22.5g carbs, 6.5g sugars, and a PointsPlus® value of 3*.

HG FYI: Make sure your cranberries weren’t included in this recent recall!

Good Morning Mega Quiche
PER SERVING (1/8th of quiche): 215 calories, 8g fat, 779mg sodium, 19.5g carbs, 1.5g fiber, 6g sugars, 15g protein — PointsPlus® value 5*

This dish is loaded with protein and veggies, plus it’s larger than a standard quiche — not to mention WAY less fatty. Maybe “rise and shine” isn’t such a tall order after all!

Ingredients:
1 package refrigerated Pillsbury Crescent Recipe Creations Seamless Dough Sheet (or HG Alternative!)
6 slices center-cut bacon or turkey bacon
2 cups chopped broccoli
2 cups sliced mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion (about 1 onion)
1 cup chopped red bell pepper (about 1 pepper)
2 1/2 cups fat-free liquid egg substitute (like Egg Beaters Original)
1/2 cup light plain soymilk
3 wedges The Laughing Cow Light Creamy Swiss cheese, room temperature
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat cheddar cheese

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray the bottom and sides of a deep 9″ X 13″ baking pan with nonstick spray. Place dough sheet along the bottom. Firmly press dough into the bottom and corners of the pan. Pierce dough several times with a fork.

Bake until dough just begins to puff up, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from oven and set aside to cool. Leave oven on.

Meanwhile, prepare bacon in a skillet sprayed with nonstick spray or on a microwave-safe plate in the microwave. (Refer to package instructions for exact cook time and temperature.) Set aside.

Bring a large skillet sprayed with nonstick spray to medium-high heat on the stove. Add broccoli and 1/4 cup water. Cover and cook until broccoli becomes bright green, about 2 minutes. Uncover and cook until water evaporates, 1 – 2 minutes. Add mushrooms, onion, and bell pepper. Cook and stir until softened, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat, blot away excess moisture, and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine egg substitute, soymilk, and cheese wedges, breaking cheese wedges into pieces. Add garlic powder, salt, and black pepper. Whisk until mostly smooth. Chop bacon and add to the bowl. Add cooked veggies and stir well.

Evenly pour contents of the bowl over the dough in the pan. Sprinkle with shredded cheese. Bake until egg mixture is cooked through, about 40 minutes.

Let slightly cool before slicing. Then serve and enjoy!

MAKES 8 SERVINGS

HG Alternative! If you can’t find the Recipe Creations dough, go for Pillsbury Reduced Fat Crescent roll dough. (The products are nearly identical.) Then just pinch/seal up the perforations for a seamless sheet.

More Brunch-tastic Dishes for Four or More!
Recipes so good, you’ll wanna make ‘em for dinner too…

Cheesy-Good Breakfast Tartlets – If you’ve got a pack of table-grazers in the house, this recipe for handheld treats is the perfect choice.

El Ginormo Southwest Oven-Baked Omelette – Mega servings with mega flavor… but not-so-mega calorie counts!

Big Fat Blueberry Muffins – When in doubt, make blueberry muffins. You can’t go wrong!

Big Southern-Style B-fast Trifle – A spoonable feast for the morning hours. Comfort food to the MAX!

Crock-Pot Cinna-Apples ‘n Oats – A hearty, wholesome pot of a.m. goodness that is sure to satisfy. Hooray!

Grab ‘n Go Breakfast Cookies – Make a few batches ahead of time, leave a note that says “FOR BREAKFAST,” and then go ahead and sleep in.

CHEW ON THIS:
December is National Fruitcake Month. Since classic versions have few fans and many calories, try our beloved and guilt-free Apple of My Cake recipe instead!

You could reach for a refined (read: white) flour-based 100-calorie pack of Chips Ahoy or a granola bar comprised of carbs sealed together with a startling glut of corn syrup (read: sugar). Take our word for it; in an hour, you’ll be back to square one.

To cure the hungry-girl blues, we’ve put together a menu of delicious, filling and surprisingly low-calorie snack options to help busy girls keep their high energy levels. This is the fuel you need to knock out that paper or exam, power through a late night or tackle a hectic afternoon–all for just about 100 calories. Magic? We think so.

1. Berry smoothie: 1/3 cup nonfat yogurt, 2/3 cup frozen berries
Smoothies are a classic on-the-go snack. They can be made with any number of ingredients thrown into a blender and pureed with the touch of a button. A homemade smoothie always trumps a store-bought one, though. Many chains fill their supersized cups with added sugars and dessert-like frozen yogurts and sherberts. Save your money and blend your own! Most importantly, base it with 100% fruit. Pick up a frozen bag of mixed berries, banana, mango or pineapple–whatever your favorite combination. Spoon in 1/3 cup plain nonfat yogurt, a splash of milk and a dollop of honey if you need more sweetness. Choose Greek-style yogurt, such as Fage, for a surge of filling protein. Cold snacks take longer to eat, which can help give your brain time to register fullness.

2. Orville Redenbacher’s Smart Pop 100-Calorie Mini Bags
If you’re in need of a salty snack, look no further than a few cups of microwave popcorn. Not only can this movie-theater delight be ready in less than two minutes, it’s filled with fiber to help keep you feeling full. It’s a very low-density snack, which will give your body the illusion that you’ve eaten a larger amount.

3. One Half Arnold Multi-Grain Select Sandwich Thin, 1 Laughing Cow Light wedge
Spread one of these delicious and perfectly-portioned wedges of creamy Laughing Cow cheese onto a half of a sandwich thin. Toast if you’d like for a makeshift grilled cheese. These mini-portions of cheese weigh in at only 35 calories each, but taste every bit as decadent as their fattier counterparts. Choose from a wide variety of flavors such as French Onion, Sundried Tomato & Mozzarella or plain old Swiss. Each has just a few grams of fat, enough to help satiate hunger. They’re also great to spread on a few whole-grain crackers! Plus, the whole grains pack in 24% of your daily dose of fiber.

4. Baked apple with cinnamon sugar
When it comes to fruit, apples are the Superman of the food group. A large red delicious or gala can be a filling snack on the go for under 100 calories. Apples have high water content, which helps to fill you up. Be sure to leave the skin on, too–it’s a great source of fiber. If you’ve got a few minutes, try cutting out the core and top of the apple; sprinkling on cinnamon sugar; and broiling on a small baking sheet for 3 to 4 minutes. All the great nutrients will still be there and you’ll feel like you’re eating dessert!

5. 1/3 cup frozen edamame
Edamame, also known as vegetable soy beans, have long been quarantined as a vegetarian-only food or a staple of Asian cuisines. But these mini-beans pack a big nutritional punch! They’re rich in carbohydrates, protein, and omega-3 fatty acids–the building blocks of a perfect snack. They’re usually sold frozen and in their pods–microwave on defrost for about 2 minutes and squeeze out of the pods if you wish. Sprinkle with Hot Shot (a delicious blend of cracked red and black pepper), garlic salt or Greek Seasoning to add some flavor.

Sources:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-100-calorie-snacks#

http://caloriecount.about.com/

Smoothie (photo): DrinkWhat. http://www.drinkwhat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Home-Made-Real-Fruit-Smoothie.jpg
Laughing Cow (photo): The Laughing Cow. http://www.thelaughingcow.com/files/2010/04/Wheels_Partially_Open_LightSwiss1.jpg
Fruit (photo): Squidoo. https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxg_mnDTlQNuCwnyjK2k0hWkvLmnRsTTYv1etIp5MEPIt3bv5yyA

Traditionally made with sheep’s milk, Greek yogurt is a strained yogurt, which makes it thicker and creamier than regular yogurt. It also has more fat, protein, and calcium. A treat on its own, the higher fat content makes Greek yogurt less likely to curdle when heated, so it works well in soups, sauces, and other cooked dishes. (Greek-style yogurt is strained, but it’s not necessarily from Greece. Some, especially domestic ones, may have added thickeners or stabilizers.)

don’t have it?

If you can’t find Greek yogurt, strain twice as much regular plain yogurt in a cheesecloth-lined colander until it reaches the consistency of sour cream, 2 to 3 hours.

how to choose:

Fage Total brand is widely available and comes in full fat or reduced fat.

how to store:

Keep refrigerated.

The idea stayed with me and has been especially front of mind lately, as people repeatedly suggest, with aplomb, that for dinner I feed the baby whatever we’re eating — a thing that doesn’t work since what we’re eating rarely exists before the baby has gone to bed.

Davis is actually also a director who’s been behind a long list of popular television shows, beloved music videos, including for Sonic Youth and Depeche Mode, and films such as “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child,” a documentary about her late friend. It turns out she’s simply equally able to bring her bright intelligence and sensibility to food-driven projects like the Tamra Davis Cooking Show (which she shoots by herself — a fact that makes a person newly consider each episode) and most recently FIVE for Kids, a curriculum she developed to equip kids with the tools they need to make smart eating choices for life.

She also does a lot of cooking with and for her two young sons and keeps a vegetarian household with her husband, Beastie Boy Mike D, who additionally doesn’t eat dairy.

Able to make vegetarianism seem cool, even in these pork belly–obsessed days of foie gras doughnuts and bacon chocolate, Davis is, in short, a person who has things figured out. Which made me want to run to her with questions.

“For me, with the kids, it’s not always just about dinner,” Davis told me, when asked about favorite go-to meals. “Sometimes you have to think about what they ate over a whole day, or that week. To me, especially as a vegetarian, the most important meal is often their breakfast, so they have brain food and I know they’re going to last the day.”

Eggs, whether poached, scrambled or in breakfast burritos, are a big part of her family’s diet, as are hot cereals such as oatmeal, grits and Cream of Wheat. She also makes the boys smoothies each morning.

“There’s always a banana and it’s either milk or juice based, and I put in some Fage yogurt, which has something like 27 grams of protein per serving. So I know that starting out they’ve had an egg and the smoothie, which is fruit and protein.”

Other breakfast favorites include sweet potato pie, quiche or a honey bean pie that she figured out a recipe for after buying one on the street and fiddling with the ratios of the ingredients on the label.

When it comes to dinner, she said, she tries to give the boys a protein, a grain and a vegetable. As for those flexible dinners, pasta lends itself well to the idea.

“Or, we’ll make chili and not make it spicy, and then when Mike and I eat it we’ll add chilies or other things they’re not going to eat.” Quesadillas are similarly adaptable, and so is a favorite Kung Pao chicken dish she makes with seitan, tofu’s denser, wheat-based cousin.

“I think it’s really important to sit down together,” Davis added, “but sometimes they’re eating at 5:30 or 6, so it’s not always feasible.”

What’s always on her grocery list?

“For sure I’ll have sweet potatoes around, I always have seitan and pesto — they seem to always like pesto on things — and yogurt. My kids are crazy about yogurt.”

For kids who are less enthusiastic eaters, there’s also hope.

Since making her way into classrooms, Davis said, “I came up with this statistic that if a kid makes something himself, he’s 90 to 95% likely to try it. And of course, then, if it’s good, he’ll eat it!”

Her FIVE for Kids effort, which Mario Batali has been sponsoring and the American Heart Association is about to take nationwide, was born of her frustrations from trying to have an effect on the lunch program in her sons’ school. The program was too tied up in red tape to budge, Davis realized, but the kids could still be educated and inspired to make good choices. Plus, because of health code rules about bringing meat into classrooms, she said, the meals she teaches are vegetarian.

“It’s incredible what happens when you explain to kids what good food is — they get so excited! They go home and tell their parents … and they’re excited to cook the recipes themselves in class. Even with something as simple as grilled cheese, there’s an incredible amount of pride, they just beam — it’s the best grilled cheese they’ve ever had.”

With 1 in 3 kids in the United States now considered obese, and 1 in 3 likely to develop diabetes — a statistic that sadly rises to 1 in 2 for Hispanic kids — knowing how to make a grilled cheese can be life saving.

“To say these statistics to kids is horrible. They don’t have to take that destiny — it’s not like they’re born with cancer. It’s about the foods you put in your mouth,” said Davis, sounding like a worried mom.

“I understand that in some families both parents have to work, so the kids are home alone eating more processed foods,” she added. “But if the kids know how to make oatmeal or eggs in the morning or pasta or a lentil soup at night — we’re giving them real survival tools.”

TAMRA DAVIS’ SWEET POTATO PIE

2 large sweet potatoes (pre baked)
2 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1/3 cup of sugar
¼ cup of maple syrup
1 tablespoon of flour
2/3 cup of milk
½ teaspoon of cinnamon
Pinch of salt

Pie Shell (pre-made is also fine)
1 stick of butter
1 ½ cup of flour
1 tablespoon maple syrup
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ – ½ cup of ice water

Pre bake 2 sweet potatoes (wrap in foil and bake at 375 for 45 min) until they are soft.

Make the pie dough by cutting in butter to flour. Add the sugar and salt. Slowly add water till it forms a dough. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Then roll it out between two pieces of wax paper or plastic wrap. Place in a pie pan and then pre-bake at 375 with a pie chain or some other weight for 20 minutes. Set aside to cool. (You don’t have to pre-bake it, but it makes the pie crust less doughy.)

Either in a bowl or a blender, combine the insides of the sweet potatoes, butter, eggs, sugar, maple syrup, flour, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix together until super smooth.

Place in the pre baked pie shell and bake for 35 to 50 minutes or until the center is set to the touch. Cool and serve. It will continue to set in the refrigerator.

*This can be made non-dairy by using margarine instead of butter and soy milk instead of milk.

The recipes in master chef Jacques Pépin’s book, subtitled “More than 700 all-time favorites From My Life in Food” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40), trace the history of his palate from his mother’s mustardy les oeufs Jeannette to the light, fresh taste of salmon in basil sauce. The book’s accompanying three-hour, searchable DVD promises to demonstrate “every technique a cook will ever need,” some of which he’ll perform on the companion TV series.

“I don’t cook the way I cooked 35 years ago,” Pépin says, “but the way you make an omelet, the way you bone a chicken, that doesn’t change.”

Houghton Mifflin Harcour – Master chef Jacques Pépin is out with “Essential Pepin.” Fluorescent Jello

So, what has changed?

“My palate is simpler than it used to be,” he says. “A young chef adds and adds and adds to the plate. As you get older, you start to take away.”

Pépin takes the same no-frills approach on his cooking shows. “Essential Pépin” begins airing this month on PBS. For more information on the series, visit http://blogs.kqed.org/ essentialpepin.

• • •

For those desiring to indulge in desserts without feeling guilty, pastry chef Marisa Churchill has turned her passion for sweets into reduced-calorie and reduced-fat desserts in “Sweet & Skinny: 100 Recipes for Enjoying Life’s Sweeter Side Without Tipping the Scales,” (Clarkson Potter; $24).

“I absolutely love desserts,” says Churchill, but “they must taste good even when you cut down the fat and calories by 50 percent,” like she’s done in the book.

Some of her skinny tricks to bake smart include “replacing all or part of the butter in a recipe with reduced-fat cream cheese, which has a similar texture and performs similarly in baking.” She also uses “browned butter for enhancing butter’s nutty flavor while using less of it and cutting back on fat.”

“I’m a big fan of zero- or low-fat Greek-style yogurt (Fage brand). It’s a great substitute for oil or butter in cakes (replace 90 percent of the oil with it) with its mild flavor and thick consistency and helps keep cakes moist.”

She includes two versions of whipped cream/topping with a fraction of the fat and calories of the real deal — a tart version that’s a blend of nonfat sour cream and heavy whipping cream — and another made by whipping up fat-free evaporated milk with gelatin in it with a little heavy cream.

For egg yolks in conventional recipes, she uses part whole eggs and part egg whites. For whole eggs, use egg whites or Egg Beaters, she advises.

The book also features 30 recipes with calorie-free Truvia, made from the stevia plant — and no sugar.

Churchill is a San Francisco native who competed on “Top Chef Season 2.”

• • •

“The Extraordinary Cookbook: How to Make Meals Your Friends Will Never Forget,” by BBC food personality Stefan Gates (host of “Cooking in the Danger Zone” and “The Gastronaut”) features unconventional cooking techniques, exotic ingredients and an obsession with interactive meals.

Gates uses everything from car engines to dishwashers to cook. fluorescent gelatin and golden chicken are just a few of his original creations.

“Extraordinary Cookbook” is $29.95 from Kyle Books.

Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2011/10/17/1908619/going-from-essential-to-extraordinary.html#ixzz1dPYag1dN

Fage

I’ve tried making pudding from other yogurts in the past and have always been disappointed. Either the texture is not really creamy or the taste is too sour. However, I recently discovered Fage yogurt in the health foods section at Kroger’s Waynetowne Plaza. I just happened to run across it after reading a review of several brands tested by a panel in which Fage ranked #1, so I wanted to try it. With the first taste, I knew I wanted to try making pudding with it. The Fage is smooth as silk and has that creamy, dense mouth feel that you associate with pudding. Even with nothing else added, it tastes good and isn’t sour at all. It also contains several live active yogurt cultures. The key to this recipe is getting the Fage brand; no other brand I’ve tried (and there were many) even comes close.

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The Flavor of Ingredients (Aside)

In this dish, as in anything you prepare, the flavor of the ingredients is a good predictor of the flavor you will get in the finished product. This should seem obvious, yet I continually run into people who think that they can get good results using inferior ingredients. One lady who asked for one of my recipes later made the recipe and brought it over asking why it tasted so different from mine. I took a taste, and it was vastly different (and not in a good way) from how mine had tasted. After a little questioning, I found that she had not used the same ingredients I had specified in the recipe. She had made a lot of substitutions. This happened to be a cake recipe, back in the days when I baked often, and I had specified real butter, real vanilla, and King Arthur flour. She had used margarine, artificial vanilla extract, and some cheap brand of flour. The flavor was so different that no one would ever have known that we both used the same recipe. Flavor is the issue in cooking, my friends, and if you sacrifice it when you buy the ingredients, you’ll know it in the end result.

Ingredients for This Recipe

In this recipe, you must get the Fage yogurt for the right flavor and texture, and I highly recommend that you use at least a real vanilla rather than an artificial vanilla extract. There are some really good vanillas available these days, including organic vanillas. I really prefer Madagascar bourbon vanillas, but the one I had on hand was the Rodelle Vanilla Extract from Kroger’s Waynetowne Plaza store, which is also good. I used organic bananas, and they were not green but not spotty either. Riper ones have more robust flavor, so if you like to savor the banana experience, get those.

I don’t know of a local source for coconut palm sugar, although some health food store in Dayton probably has it. I ordered mine online from the NaturalNews.com store, which currently has a special on the 16-oz. size. It adds a sort of brown sugar flavor and the crunch you would have had if you’d used vanilla wafers as in the traditional banana pudding, but it is a low glycemic sugar that will not cause your blood sugar to spike. Stevia is available at most health food stores and many grocery stores.

The recipe makes two servings.

Banana Yogurt Pudding

1 17.5-oz. carton Fage 2% plain yogurt

2 pleasantly ripe sliced bananas

½-1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

2 heaping T. coconut palm sugar

Stevia to taste

Stir the vanilla extract into the carton of yogurt. Sprinkle a little stevia on, stir thoroughly, then taste. It should be slightly undersweet, because you are going to top the pudding with the much sweeter coconut palm sugar. Once you have it the way you like it, layer it into a dish, alternating with sliced bananas. Top it with three banana slices and then sprinkle 1 T. coconut palm sugar over each dish, and enjoy.

If you cannot find the coconut palm sugar or just prefer the pudding without it, simply omit it. I love the palm sugar on top; it makes it a bit more decadent and nicely sweet. Fage puts a circle of paper on top of the yogurt to seal in freshness; be sure to remove that before using.

Kroger’s Waynetowne Plaza

7747 Old Troy Pike

Dayton, OH 4542

(937) 233-7602

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Neither of my kids will eat a nutritious diet without my constant supervision, planning and resourcefulness. It is time for us moms to stand up for good nutrition and provide our kids something healthy that they will like to eat. It is our responsibility to make sure good healthy food is tasty and appetizing to our kids. We can do it. Over the years I have learned a few tricks that help me to get kids to eat their fruits and veggies.

Mix It Up
Hiding fruits and vegetables in a puree is an age-old solution. As a child I heard my own mother tell my uncle that she purees the onions and carrots she put in her spaghetti sauce so that we would eat it (to this day I hate onions but love her spaghetti sauce). I can remember looking at a chunky spaghetti sauce saying “no way am I going to eat that!”

Today with our food processors and smoothie makers and all the incredible cooking tools we have at our fingertips it is easier than ever to blend healthy and delicious kid friendly foods. Often, they even look like treats.

•Smoothies are a great place to start. A simple blender can do the trick. Place 1/2 cup of milk, 1/2 banana, 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt and 1 cup of your choice of berries. Blend until smooth and you have a healthy and delicious smoothie that any child or adult will find to be both delicious and healthy. Add vanilla or almond soy milk in place of the milk for a change in flavor. Allergies to berries? Try peaches. Yum.
•Meatballs and hamburger patties are excellent opportunities to mix in some veggies. Simply puree or finely chop 1 large carrot, 1 large onion, 1 large handful of basil, 1 large handful of flat leaf parsley, and 3-6 cloves of garlic to your taste. Mix it with 1-2 pounds of ground hamburger, ground turkey or ground chicken for a healthy and flavorful patty. They won’t even notice!
•Dips are another fantastic way to encourage kids to eat raw fruits and vegetables. Greek yogurt is high in protein and can be mixed with anything for a tasty dip. Add some onion soup mix, or ranch dressing powdered mix, or your own spice concoction for a tasty vegetable dip. Or add pureed fruit and mix well for a colorful fruit dip. Kids are far more likely to eat their raw foods if they have a pretty and tasty dip to delve into.
Cover It Up
If food is fried, my kids are all over it. If food LOOKS like it is fried, my kids are all over it. Covering a fish filet, chicken strip and yes, even your veggies with a simple bread and cheese mixture gives a whole new dimension to how you can serve kids delicious healthy foods.

Try this simple recipe for a “looks fried but it’s baked” fun way to serve and eat veggies:

•Mix 2/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese with 2 Cups of Italian seasoned dry bread crumbs in a gallon sized plastic bag, shake to mix.
•Add 1 cup of plain low-fat Fage Greek yogurt to another 1 gallon sized plastic bag.
•Cut zucchini into medallions or strips, slice red or green peppers into strips, cut carrots into thin sticks, break a head of broccoli into florets.
•Put the vegetables in the Greek yogurt bag and shake to coat. Then transfer them to the bread mixture bag and shake to coat.
•Place on a cookie sheet treated with cooking spray oil, separate veggies so they are not touching. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes or until they are golden brown.
Wrap It Up
Wrapping your vegetables or fruits in a pretty package is another effective way in getting kids to eat their fruits and veggies. My son loves bento boxes. I know that if I wrap his lunch in a bento box I can put just about anything into it and he will eat it.

•In his bento box I often will put a scoop of rice. Then I will take some cheese slices and use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. I shave a couple slices of carrots with a vegetable peeler, coil them up and put them in the corner. They are curly and fun, kids always eat them. I will use peanut butter to dress up apples or slices of celery as well. You can also add some raisins to the mix for more fiber. Be creative but make it beautiful and fun and you are sure to have a healthy eater in your home!
As a parent it is our job to make sure our kids get what their bodies need. Making healthy food more appetizing and appealing for our kids allows us to ensure a healthy diet for our kids. By simply mixing it up, covering it up, and wrapping it up we show great skill in getting kids to eat their fruits and veggies. Then, a popsicle from the ice cream man, once in a while, isn’t such a big deal.

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