THE NIBBLE BLOG: Products, Recipes & Trends In Specialty Foods


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TIP OF THE DAY: Summer Fruit Yogurt Parfait

Yogurt parfait with summer fruits. Photo
EatCaliforniaFruit.com.

You may be of the habit of enjoying yogurt with fresh strawberries and bananas. They’re great, but they’re also available and tasty year-round.

Celebrate summer by switching to summer fruits: delicious peaches, plums and nectarines from California—available for the next three-to-four months.

You can enjoy this recipe in a bowl or other vessel, but a parfait glass or glass mug makes it look even yummier.

Ingredients Per Serving
• 1 cup fresh California peaches, plums or nectarines, sliced
• 1/2 cup of your favorite low-fat or fat-free yogurt (we like Greek yogurt)
• 1/2 cup granola or 1 ounce coarsely-chopped nuts

Preparation
1. Place half of the fruit in the bottom of a parfait glass or other dish.
2. Top with half of the yogurt and half of the granola. Repeat.
3. Serve immediately.

For more summer fruit recipes, visit EatCaliforniaFruit.com.

Check out our favorite yogurt brands.

 

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PRODUCT: Skinnygirl Margarita

What if you’re one of those “Real Housewives Of…” ladies, enjoy cocktails but have to watch every calorie (the camera adds 10 pounds)? With a typical four-ounce Margarita weighing in at 500 calories (the majority due to sugar in the liqueur or the cocktail mix), what’s a housewife do?

If you’re Bethenny Frankel, one of the Real Housewives Of New York (and a natural foods chef), you formulate a lower-calorie Margarita in an episode of your reality series. Then, when the most-asked quesiton on the entire Bravo website is “How to make a Skinny Girl Margarita,” you bottle it and sell it (find locations).

The open-and-serve bottled Margarita is all natural, made of 100% blue agave tequila, flavored with lime juice and sweetened with lower-glycemic agave syrup.

While some “slenderized foods” can pass for almost the real thing (SkimPlus milk, nonfat Greek yogurt and sugar-free ice cream are examples), here you know you’re drinking a Margarita Lite.

Nevertheless, many dieters will enjoy saving 75% of the calories, and Ms. Frankel is to be congratulated for providing a lower-calorie alternative to America’s most popular cocktail.

While we don’t like sugary-sweet drinks, to us, Skinnygirl Margarita is missing a bit of sweetness (although the more we drank it and became accustomed to it, the more we enjoyed it).

So we experimented and found ways to improve it!

Save 75% of Margarita calories. Photo
courtesy SkinnyGirlCocktails.com.

First we added a packet of non-caloric sweetener. A liquid sweetener would have been better because a white sediment from the fillers in non-caloric sweetener settled at the bottom of the glass. But we really liked the added sweetness and didn’t mind the sediment.

Next we tried adding more agave syrup. Ms. Frankel might have done the same, but for the desire to keep the cocktail to 100 calories/serving. Agave is a great, low-glycemic sweetener (it has an average glycemic index of 32, half that of sugar). While agave has the same calories as sugar (about 17 calories/teaspoon), it is 1.5 times sweeter—so your calories buy you more. You can spare it: Add another teaspoon of agave to Skinnygirl.

Finally, we rimmed the glass with sea salt (kosher salt is fine, too). Bingo!

Feel free to add a lime wedge or lime wheel as a garnish. It’s not typical with Margaritas (the salt rim is); but we like it as a virtually calorie-free “extra” to chew on.

 

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PRODUCT: Whoopie Pie Pan

Have fun making whoopie pies at home.
Photo courtesy SurLaTable.com.

If you’re enamored of whoopie pies—or inspired by our current Top Pick Of The Week, the whoopie pies from WannaHavaCookie—Wilton has just made your life easier.

The baking specialist has created a whoopie pie pan that makes it easy to get perfect cake “sandwich” halves. Otherwise, you have to drop batter with a cookie scoop onto a baking sheet, and pray that they’ll spread to even sizes. (Perhaps there’s so much filling in a whoopie pie to distract from the uneven cake layers.)

The nonstick pan is currently an exclusive at Sur La Table for $12.95. It makes 12 tops/bottoms, enough to make just 6 whoopie pies. That’s not a lot of output for all that effort of mixing, baking and cleanup: You’ll have to make a few batches to meet what will no doubt be great demand.

Recipes are included. After you’ve mastered them, you can check out the two whoopie pie cookbooks on the market.

Find more of our favorite cookies and recipes in our Gourmet Cookies & Brownies section.

 

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TIP OF THE DAY: Peach Raspberry Lemonade

Peaches are in season. So are raspberries. And life always gives us lemons. So make an extra-special homemade lemonade. Per glass:

Ingredients
• 2 tablespoons peach purée (made from ripe peaches)
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 4 raspberries
• Lemon wedge for garnish
• Optional garnish: fresh mint sprig
• Ice

Preparation
1. Muddle lemons, peach purée, raspberries and lemon juice in a water glass or collins glass.
2. Add ice and fill the glass with cold water. Mix well. Sweeten to taste (but don’t overdo the sweetener—the goal is to taste the peaches and raspberries).
3. Serve with a lemon wedge and a straw.

To make a whole pitcher, multiply the ingredients by the number of people you want to serve, muddle in the pitcher, add ice and water and stir vigorously.

You can garnish lemonade glasses with
sanding sugar—or, for the Margarita crowd,
salt! Photo courtesy Whole Foods Market.

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PRODUCT: Fat-Free Half And Half

Half &half for people cutting calories and/or
fat. Photo by Jerry Deutsch | THE NIBBLE.

We love milk—and thanks to all of the cookies, cake and cereals we test at THE NIBBLE, not to mention all the cappuccinos and lattes—we drink a lot of it.

Our milk of choice is Special Request Skim Plus from Farmland Dairies. It adds additional milk protein to skim milk; the result tastes like 2% milk instead of 0%. It’s costlier because of the expense of the milk protein, but it’s more than worth it.

One cup of Farmland Special Request Skim Plus Milk contains 110 calories, no fat, 11 grams of protein and 405 milligrams of calcium. It’s not only lower in calories, but more nutritious than whole milk, which contains 149 calories, 8 grams of fat, 8 grams of protein and 302 milligrams of calcium found in whole milk. (Regular skim milk has 80 calories/cup; the extra calories in Skim Plus come from the added protein.)

Farmland Dairies dairy serves the East Coast, but other regional dairies have similar products. Try “super skim” and see how much more enjoyable milk-drinking can be. If you do live in the area, here’s a $1.00 coupon to try any of the products (good through October 31, 2010).

We recently tasted Farmland Dairies’ relatively new Special Request Fat-Free Half & Half. Other brands of FFH&H have failed to please. Check the labels—one prominent brand is made from nonfat milk, milk, corn syrup solids (sugar), artificial color and sugar.

But Farmland Dairy’s FFH&H is made only from skim milk and milk, enhanced with vitamins A and D. It really tastes good! As with the Skim Plus milk, more milk protein and calcium are added to create creaminess. The MSRP for a quart is $2.99.

Milk-Buying Tips From Farmland Dairies

• Make the dairy case your last stop before checking out. At the checkout counter, have milk packed next to other refrigerated or frozen foods to keep it cool.

• Don’t leave milk in a hot car while you run other errands. Fifteen to twenty minutes in a hot car is enough to raise the temperature of a carton of milk ten degrees and shorten the storage life of the milk.

• Refrigerate milk as soon as you get home, before you unpack your other groceries.

• Keep your refrigerator temperature at 40°F or lower. As the refrigerator temperature goes up, the storage life of milk goes down.

• After opening, ultra-pasteurized milk and all other milk products should be consumed within approximately seven days, regardless of the “sell by” date. Once the carton is opened, the air that is introduced contributes to spoilage and effectively voids the “sell by” date.

• Temperature control is critical: One degree will affect freshness. Don’t leave milk standing out on the counter. If you leave it at the table (in the carton, pitcher or carafe), put it in a dish of ice.

 

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