Greek Yogurt All Day

Believe it or not, it took me foEVAH to hop on the greek yogurt train.

1) I'm a HUGE texture person.. so this "gunky" stuff seemed gross.

2) I heard the it was really sour & that seemed odd to me being that I get my sour fix from Sour Patch Kids.

3) I'm the type of personal that refuses to do something just because it seems popular. I thought greek yogurt was some pinteresty fad that people would get over soon enough..

 Chobani is LAUGHING hysterically at their success as I type.

1) Greek yogurt is now a protein STAPLE in our house. If you go with Chobani, as opposed to many off brands, you can get the original flavor with very little sugar added and as much as 16+ grams of protein in each serving!!

2) There are SO many ways to down play the sour/tart factor. Original greek yogurt is super tasty with honey, stevia or agave! 

3) Greek yogurt is WAY more dynamic than traditional yogurt.

Point #3 brings me to the reason for my post today. Greek yogurt can be used ALL.DAY.LONG. Seriously let me just show you.

Breakfast:

My favorite ways to have greek yogurt with my breakfast is to make a bowl with crunchy granola and cold fruit OR with hot steel cut oats and warm cinnamon apples (can you say fall, y'all!?).

Baking Substitute:

-> for butter or oil!

Check out the recipe for Blueberry Yogurt Muffins HERE ,where I substituted half of the butter the recipe called for and ALL the oil with plain greek yogurt!

Lunch:

Use greek yogurt in place of mayo -> I love making tuna salad with a dollop of yogurt, hard boiled egg, diced apple and a little pickle then serving it with a toasted pita or tortilla. {YUM} It's quick, simple, delicious, healthy AND 21 day fix approved!

I also use greek yogurt in my famous chicken salad that has lemon juice, tarragon, diced grapes, celery and occasionally red onion! You're welcome :)

Dinner:

Swap our your sour cream and top your tacos, salad and burritos with yogurt!! It was such a mental road block for me initially, but I can now EASILY swap out sour cream in just about any dish, dressing or DIP with chobani. I hope that just blew your mind a bit. Think about that for a second. Greek yogurt ranch dressing. Greek yogurt in your mexican layered dip. Greek yogurt mashed potatoes. The list goes on! Now I'm drooling..

Snack or Dessert:

During a strict meal plan, this stuff is like CRACK, but I promise you'll love this concoction any time! Mix up some peanut butter (or PB2) with honey, greek yogurt and cinnamon for a DECADENT fruit dip that you can make in bulk to keep in your fridge!

I might not have told you anything that you haven't heard before, but maybe I reminded you to actually use it more! If you have any other suggestions for me, please share them below! We're always looking for ways to make our snacks and meals healthier.

Happy Wednesday, friends!!

21 Day Fixed Approved: Chocolate, Peanut Butter OATS

Today's recipe is a special one, folks. This tasty treat is straight out of Autumn Calabrese's new cookbook called Fixate; for those of you who don't know who Autumn is, she's the creator of the 21 Day Fix that gave me these results in 3 weeks. Yeah, she's one of my heroes. Ha!

ANYWAYS, this recipe is an awesome breakfast option for the days I save my shake for a quick lunch or on the weekends when Nate and I want to eat a yummy, guilt free breakfast together! 

So let's start with the main ingredient: Steel Cut Oats.

For those of you who aren't familiar with anything other than instant, old fashioned or rolled oats:

"Whole grain oats provide a healthy start to your day. Steel-cut oats, also known as Irish oats, are a type of whole grain oat cut from the center portion, or kernel of the oat, called the groat. Although steel-cut oats undergo less processing than rolled oats or instant oatmeal, all whole-grain oats have essentially the same nutritional value, as long as the finished product contains no added sugars. Steel-cut oats do take longer to cook than rolled or instant oats and have a chewier consistency."

Personally, I prefer steel cut oats because I'm a texture gal! Take the extra time to try them, I bet you'll like them! Go ahead and make these bad boys start to finish before you move onto the other ingredients.

Next, you're going to need some shakeology. This is going to give your oats a CREAMY sauce to bathe in & that desert-like chocolatey taste! PS, the shakeology is also adding a protein element to this meal.

If you aren't sure what Shakeology is, check out my blog post about it here; it's a nutrient dense shake that costs about $4 a day to drink and replaces a meal, vitamins and supplements. It's a game changer in healthy eating and the pursuit of fitness goal, I highly recommend you try it risk free for 30 days.

Now you need to stir in some all-natural peanut butter! My household is 100% crunchy, but you could of course go the creamy route.

SO this is where my rendition of this recipe gets comical. My hubby and I moved on Friday.. who cares, you just want the recipe.. WELL, most of my food items were either packed, discarded or misplaced. A few lucky ingredients made it over here to my two burner, no oven kitchen. SO, when the cook book says himalayan sea salt, caramel extract and cinnamon- I say no biggie!

All I had here was vanilla extract, so I used that and went without the cinnamon and sea salt. You know what? This stuff still turned out to be AMAZING! I can only imagine how much richer the other ingredients would make it.

Okay, so here's the recipe!

4 Cups Water

1 Cup Steel Cut Oats

1.5 Scoops of Chocolate Shakeology

4 TBSP All Natural Peanut Butter

Dash of Cinnamon (omitted above)

Dash of Pink Himalayan Sea Salt (omitted above)

1/2 TSP Caramel Extract (substituted pure vanilla!)

Optional: Mixed Berries for Topping (or in my case- I had like 2 strawberries left in my mini fridge) 

Top this treat with some mixed berries & you're SET!

Bon Appetit, My Friends!

xo, Lindsey