Love for Food

For whatever reason whenever I am trying to eat healthy, I always need to have a dessert at the end of the day. The past few months my top pick has been diet ice cream. To me, the best low cal ice cream/yogurts around are the Skinny Cow or mango flavor from Pinkberry. Alas, my favorites are also the most expensive. I had leftover strawberries from the salad, so I decided to make my own (strawberry) fro-yo. I consulted a recipe from David Lebovitz, who is the author of The Perfect Scoop (most if not all of his recipes are available online). I changed it around a bit after tasting it. I found it way to sweet. Perhaps it could be due to my strawberries being more sweet than his.

For a while I was buying Eddy's zero fat ice, zero sugar ice cream, because it was super cheap at Pathmark ($1.77) for a huge tub. But after the reading the ingredients I was a bit frazzled. It was composed of almost all chemicals. Yuck! Lebovitz's recipe was pretty healthy, except for the sugar. I was thinking of using Splenda but I figured a little sugar can't hurt all that much. I was very happy with the results. I used zero fat Greek yogurt which resulted in a rich, creamy, fro-yo. My dork ah ha moment was when I consulted my fellow work friend/foodie. She told me the reason for the vodka in the recipe. Since alcohol does not freeze it helps the consistency of the ice cream/fro-yo not get icy and rock hard. A great tip! (I actually used rum since that was all I had. You don't taste the alcohol.)

Ingredients: Serves 8.5 (1 quart)
2 cups Greek fat free yogurt/or non fat yogurt
1 lb strawberries (I used frozen)
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vodka
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Method:

• Wash and cut up strawberries and place in a large bowl. Cover strawberries with sugar, lemon juice and vodka and let sit room temperature for about two hours.
• Blend strawberries in blender and strain mixture for seeds.
• Add yogurt to mixture and cool in fridge for about an hour.
• Process mixture in ice cream maker for about 20 minutes.