Thursday, July 2, 2015

Easy Berry Ambrosia - Perfectly Patriotic

Today hubby and I took the day off. This morning we got up and ran errands after dropping Spike off at the groomer. For breakfast, instead of my usual cup of Greek yogurt, I had a piece of leftover pizza from last night with my cup of coffee. When we got back, I decided to continue my meal swap by having Greek yogurt for lunch. I decided to make it a bit special (and patriotic) by making a "healthy treat" out of it instead.

I diced a couple of fresh ripe strawberries and rinsed some fresh blueberries, broke up a couple of walnuts and mixed that into my cup of yogurt along with chia seeds, a splash of cream and stevia. You could also add in some unsweetened coconut if you wanted even more texture. It was awesome and transformed my plain yogurt into a delicious treat. I snapped a couple photos below and included the ridiculously easy recipe. Enjoy!




Happy Independence Day!

Easy Berry Ambrosia

Ingredients:

1 cup plain Greek yogurt (I used Fage 2%)
1 rounded teaspoon chia seeds
Stevia, to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons cream
2 or 3 diced strawberries
Scant 1/4 cup fresh blueberries
2 walnuts, broken into pieces

Directions:

Combine all ingredients together. Allow to sit for a few minutes (chia seeds thicken the yogurt to make the texture even more decadent). 

*Note: If desired, add a teaspoon or two unsweetened shredded coconut.

15 comments:

CyberSis said...

Hi GGC,

How sweet, creamy, cool, and delicious ... and your patriotic berry treat looks pretty good, too! ;-)

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

Thanks! :-)

Sami said...

I eat this often for breakfast. Your photos look great and go well with the Patriotic theme.
Happy Independence day.

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi Sami,

Thanks! I typically just add the chia seeds and a bit of stevia to my "every day" yogurt breakfast so it is a special treat for me to add in the berries on the weekend. :-)

unter der laterne said...

Hi Ayla, want to wish you and your family and cyberSis a very nice 4th of July !
Hopefully it will be a safe one for our country !

Lovely breakfast-I have the same with some hemp seeds added to give me some energy which I am lacking badly !

Bis bald ! Barbara.

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi Barbara,

Happy 4th of July to you too. I, too, hope it will remain a safe day for all of us. Both of my boys are running in the Atlanta Peachtree Road Race this morning and with all the safety warnings around the country (and what happened at Boston's marathon)...I can't help but be worried. I called both of them last night and told them to be safe and that if anything happened to make sure they didn't leave without the other. I have never ever told them anything like that before. As luck would have it, it is pouring down rain here where they have had to postpone the run for the last half of runners because of heavy rain and lightning and they are hoping to resume it in about 30 mins. That means one of my boys should have finished (he had an earlier start time) and the other probably has a delayed start due to the weather. So now they have the threat of lightning strikes too!

Do you find the hemp seeds helpful for giving you energy? I bought a bag a while ago and ate them a few times but just didn't get into them for some reason and ended up tossing them. I wish you and everyone a very safe day today! :-)

unter der laterne said...

Hi Ayla, I hope that the humidity in Atlanta is not high today for the sake of the runners! Good luck to your boys, well I guess the race is a fait accompli now .
Hemp seeds are very healthy and I eat them every day but apparently not enough since I have to force myself to focus and not give in to my fatigue . Today I started to eat Sauerkraut right out of the jar, lol, throughout the day, maybe that will do the trick! I remember that it was fed to workers after the war to strengthen their poor skinny bodies ! Unfortunately in this country it is produced with too much salt. So I bought a large glass jar to make my own but gave up--you guessed it-no energy! Since it is a fermented food it comes highly recommended.
My mother made the best cooked sauerkraut with onions. lots of bacon and many apples. Sometimes when she was pressed for time she simply put apple sauce in it to take the edge off! Bay leaves are also a very important ingredient.

THANK God that you have an abundance of energy it but I think that you do not get enough sleep! Right?
take care!

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi Barbara,

Thanks. Both boys survived their run but since they ran in heavy rain, it was more exhausting (I guess your body doesn't cool off when it is soaked). Younger son's start time was delayed by almost an hour due to lightning. They will come visit tomorrow instead of today so hopefully they will rest up and rehydrate.

You are correct...I definitely do not get enough sleep! I am trying to work on that. On the weeks that I make an effort, I feel so much better...but then I slip back into old habits again! I wonder if part of your lack of energy might be your underlying pain; I'm sure that it is physically exhausting and draining. Your mother's sauerkraut sounds amazing...onions, bacon and apples...oh MY! I did not know about bay leaves in sauerkraut either. I learn something new every single day! Hope you are having a nice weekend...take care! :-)

CyberSis said...

Hi you two (Ayla & Barbara)

Happy 4th of July to you both, too! :-)

It doesn't sound like the marathoners had a whole lot of fun running in the lightening storms and downpours. I'm sure they're glad it's over with ... I know you are, GGC! I tried hemp seeds once, too, but they met the same fate as yours did. Lately I've seen Bob's Red Mill hemp protein powder and wondered if it might make a good sub for the whey protein powder in your cake recipes. I'm looking locally for a *small* bag of unsweetened whey powder but everything is flavored and sweetened and I really don't want to order a big huge container of the plain.

I found Barbara's comments about sauerkraut interesting. Americans today are quite clueless about fermented foods, whereas these traditional foods have always been a part of European cuisine (Asian, too.) I recently learned that sauerkraut (and pickles, etc.) are not all created equal. If the label doesn’t say “contains active cultures” there will not be any beneficial bacteria in the product. This would include all canned and jarred products on the regular store shelves as well as most of the refrigerated products. As I understand it, those would be considered “pickled” rather than “fermented.” Bubbies is the one refrigerated product that I’ve come across so far that has the “active cultures” statement on their label.

Recently, I ordered a couple of inexpensive “air-lock” kits from this web site ..... www.cookinggodsway.com. The air-locks fit the tops of wide-mouth Mason jars. It’s not absolutely essential to use them, but it makes the process easy and pretty much fool-proof. So far I’ve made the dilled green beans, and they were delicious! (I used those lovely green beans from Costco.) The web site has quite a few lacto-fermentation recipes. I’d like to try the deli pickles and/or sauerkraut soon. I bet a person could buy packaged shredded cabbage and use it for an easy way to make a quart or two of sauerkraut. I just might try that! :-)

Hope you and Barbara are both enjoying the remainder of the holiday. Take care and stay safe, you two!

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

I wonder if any health food stores or small grocery markets (like Sprouts) might carry the whey protein powder in their bulk bins where you can purchase small amounts? I'll have to look when I go next...I've just never checked.

Dilled green beans sound wonderful...and yes, Costco does have some beautiful green beans. I'll check out your link. You are right though, other cultures did make "cultured foods" that have somehow gone by the wayside and are now making a return gradually. Not sure if you belong to Sam's Club or not, but they have a large 2-lb bag of beautiful coleslaw mix (I think it's made by Taylors) that I've bought recently. There is actually "green" cabbage in the bag instead of all white like many mixes seem to have. I have thoroughly enjoyed sauteing it like I posted yesterday (with bacon and onions). I actually made that again this morning for breakfast and instead of eggs, I had yogurt on the side. Weird breakfast, huh?

You'll have to let me know if the packaged shredded cabbage mix works if you try it out. That sure would simplify things wouldn't it! Thanks for the link. Hope you enjoyed your day today! :-)

CyberSis said...

Hi GGC,

Great idea about looking for whey powder in bulk at a health food store. They are few and far between around here, but I'll give our local store a try. Thanks also for the tip on the bagged coleslaw at Sam's (yes, we're members.) I'll look for it. Looks like I have no excuse now for not trying the sauerkraut. :-) In fact, we were out of Costco's bagged salad (with the sliced Brussels sprouts) and happened to pick up a couple of small bags of Taylor Farms "Garden Vegetable Chopped Salad" while we were at Sam's Club yesterday. It's really quite good ... mostly a broccoli/cauliflower slaw, a few broccoli florets, and small amounts of shredded carrots & red cabbage. It comes with a little packet of coleslaw dressing mix (which I'm not really interested in) with dried cranberries & sunflower seeds.

BTW, I *LOVE* the breakfast you posted yesterday!

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

I've been reading the link you sent re Lacto-Fermenting. Quite interesting. I saw the green bean recipe and the sauerkraut recipe as well as the Texas skillet bread you mentioned a while back. Looks quite easy to do. Do you need to buy a complete kit or can you just buy a couple of jars to *try" first? I'll look around and see what I can find but it looks quite simple to do. Besides the big bag of coleslaw mix at Sam's...ours also carries big beautiful heads of cauliflower as well. Does yours carry that too? These are humongous heads compared to what I find in my grocery store. The chopped salad mix you found sounds good. :-)

CyberSis said...

Hi GGC,

The kit I bought is called "The Original Veggie Fermenter (Dual Kit)"
It's under the "Lacto-fermenting" tab on the home page -- then under "Supplies and Tools." Here is the direct link ..... http://shop.cookinggodsway.com/proddetail.php?prod=cgw-alsk

“WB Total Health,” has a small section on fermented food (Pages 331-333.) You’ll see that the airlock system isn’t really necessary – but for a rank amateur like me I thought I’d better give it every opportunity for success, so I ordered the kit. I understand that you can get the components at a store that sells wine & beer making stuff ... but I thought it was less trouble just ordering the kit. :-) And besides it comes with instructions ... not *many* instructions, mind you, cuz it’s so simple.

The set I ordered just includes the air-lock system itself, which I then used with my own Mason jars. If you scroll down a bit in the description, you'll see that you can get a couple of dollars off if you also order weights. The food must remain completely submerged under the brine solution. So when you make sauerkraut or something that is cut into small pieces, you need the weights to keep the food from floating up. Dr. D. suggests a clean rock that fits the jar opening, so you don’t even need the “fancy” weights.

I haven’t used the weights yet because for things like whole beans or carrot sticks you cut them somewhat shorter than jar-length and pack them into the jars quite tightly, thus preventing them from floating above the solution. (I used pint jars for the beans.)

So here’s the “starter set” I ordered ...... 2 air-lock kits plus 2 weights (“Autumn Leaves” design.) So I ended up spending $32. Easy come, easy go, eh? :-)

It really is easy-peasy. I’m pleased so far with how everything has worked and I love my dilly beans.

CyberSis said...

P.S.

I actually bought *one* "Dual Kit," which includes two air-lock systems. (It's getting much too late to be typing on the computer!)

I'll look for the cauliflower at Sam's ... that's become quite a staple around our house! :-)

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

Thanks! I checked out your system. Love the cute weights with leaves on them. When I get back from Alaska, I will probably go ahead and order the set to give it a try. And personally, I would rather have the cute weights than a "clean rock"...LOL. Thanks for all the info!!! :-)