Who but Nancy Leson could go so gaga over yogurt? You, maybe, but not me. A little may do no harm but I'm just not an eat-it-out-of-the-carton kind of guy. Still, when Nancy cajoled me into trying Ellenos Greek Yogurt, it really was the best I'd ever tasted. The Big Balk came when she attempted to get fruit-o-phobic me to try the passionfruit variety.
"I would not get out of an electric chair to eat that," I told her. And I didn't.That plain Ellenos was good stuff, though. Nancy likes it all so well that she wrote about it at length in a recent "You'll Swear it Came From the Gods" article for the Seattle Times.
As for what makes it Greek yogurt, Nancy filled me in on the the basics.
"Regular yogurt is strained twice. But Greek yogurt gets additional straining, which is why it's so thick and why it tastes so creamy," she said. "Greek yogurt has less sugar, fewer carbohydrates and more protein than regular yogurt."
Actually, about the only thing I use yogurt for is to make tzatsiki sauce for my homemade gyros. To thicken that, I let regular yogurt seep through a cheesecloth-lined wire strainer, as pictured above. Now I think that next time around I'll just go straight for the Greek.
"The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt."
– Calvin Trillin
