yoghurt!

My children adore yoghurt - it's one of the few things they will always eat, even my picky 2-year old. But I hate to give them most brands of yoghurt you buy in the store, because they are so full of sugar. One 4oz container has as much as 30 grams of sugar! Yikes! Trader Joe's has a kind of Greek yoghurt that's sweetened only with fruit and fruit juices - it's really yummy, but at $1.25 a container, it gets kinda pricey.

And then I discovered a fabulous alternative that's just as good and much cheaper: I bought a large container of plain Greek yoghurt - Smiths sells a brand called Greek Gods that's really good. I then spooned out an individual serving, added slightly-thawed frozen strawberries, a dribble of honey, and a dash of vanilla. Mixed together and chopped strawberries slightly with a spoon; it tasted delicious! And it is so much better for you this way because you get to control the amount of sugar that ends up in your yoghurt. The fruit is so sweet and the yoghurt is so rich and creamy that you hardly need any honey at all - or you can forgo it altogether.

Try any kind of fruit - strawberry, mango, pineapple, blueberries, raspberries, banana, peaches, etc; you could use fresh or frozen. I like mine with chunks of fruit, so I just chop it with a spoon, but if you like it smooth you could put it in the blender. Or, if you don't have any fruit, you could use fruit juices to make it sweet and flavorful. Or you can make just plain vanilla, or honey and almond (add a drop of almond extract).

You could also put the fruit and yoghurt in an ice-cream maker and have frozen yoghurt for a summer treat!

Plus, the Greek Gods website has all kinds of recipes that you can make with yoghurt. They were right: after Greek yoghurt, I can't go back to the regular kind!