Just like coffee and tea, I need you regularly

[venta]

A friend of mine does PR for Yeo Valley, who make yoghurts. Or maybe she does blogging and copywriting for them. Or some form of other freelance stuff. Actually, I concede, I have no idea what it is she actually does for them. The net result, as far as I'm concerned, is that she sporadically wants me to go to her house and eat yoghurt and have opinions about it.

As a big fan of both yoghurt and having opinions, I quite enjoy it.

So, yesterday she made me close my eyes and eat various yoghurts. Which I did (having been assured that none of them were anchovy and hedgehog flavour). Then she pointed out she had 16 giant tubs of the stuff, including duplicates, and a husband who doesn't eat yoghurt, and would I please take some of the stuff away.

So I did. And can I just say that Yeo Valley Greek-style lemon and ginger yoghurt is The Business? It's extremely creamy, it's lemony (almost lemon curdy), and very, very slightly gingery. I've just had a bowl of it for breakfast, with granola[*], and I'm now contemplating second breakfast.

Or early lunch. Or something. It's a "limited edition" yoghurt, whatever the blithering Margaret that means, so I don't know how easy it'll be to track down in the shops. But I'd really recommend making the effort.

(No one is paying me to say this, by the way, it really is very nice.)

[*] all right, it wasn't granola at all, it was Co-Op muesli, but I sprinkled it on top of the yog in a very cool and California kind of way.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmmmmmm greek style lemon and ginger yoghurt sounds gorgeous.

I'm now wondering if I could DIY something similar with soy yoghurt or if it would curdle.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not an expert in the handling of soy yoghurt, but to get something that tasted the same I reckon you'd want to use lemon curd, not actual lemons. The Yeo Valley stuff is actually quite sweet and puddingy. Can one acquire/make dairy-free lemon curd? If not, even something like lemon marmelade might have the right effect.

I'm a big fan of ginger, but even I think it might be easy to over-ginger this. I reckon grate ginger and squeeze the juice into the yoghurt. (That wouldn't curdle dairy yoghurt, I assume it'd be fine with soy.)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

One can make dairy-free lemon curd, yes, by using a hard vegetable fat in place of butter.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Clearly one could :)

I just wasn't sure whether the resulting thing would be nice to eat. Have you tried?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I've had lemon curd made with margarine rather than butter, and I don't remember it being awful.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aha, thank you. In that case I shall add it to the list of things I can put in cakes made for my dairy-free friends :)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Can one acquire/make dairy-free lemon curd?

It has been a while, but I think it's possible. Egg free would be harder.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think egg-free would be pretty doomed. I've actually never tried cooking with the egg-free-replacement-egg-powder-food-substitute-product you can buy, but I fear it. And certainly for lemon curd I can't imagine it working.

(Any passing vegans/egg-freers are invited to set me straight...)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

There are quite a few recipes for vegan lemon curd online - most seem to use cornflour and coconut milk rather than egg-substitute-product. One uses almond milk, which I've never heard of but sounds quite special. (NB I have never tasted these things - it's possible only hardened vegans would enjoy them)

[lnr]

Generally limited edition yogurts seem to be available for 3 to 6 months across the country, and if they're *very* popular they sometimes return as full-time flavours, if they're slightly popular they sometimes have another limited run, and if not they vanish never to be seen again. Muller seem to be very fond of them.

Lemon and ginger does sound fantastic though - all too many yogurts these days seem to be over-sweetened to my taste though.

(Today's breakfast was stewed rhubarb with rhubarb yogurt and a sprinkle of muesli on top. Perhaps I too am cool and Californian, with a Yorkshire twist :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I concede that the lemon one was sweet, but I felt it worked ok. Sweet like a lemon pudding, but still lemony enough not to be sickly.

Your breakfast sounds great - I also tried the Yeo Valley rhubarb yoghurt (a little too sweet for my taste) and the raspberry one (which I actually didn't recognise, because it tasted like raspberries rather than oversweetened raspberry-flavoured things). I also tried a million other flavours, but I'll spare you the details :)

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

Sadly I have a big problem with Yeo Valley in that they appear to use homoeopathy rather than veterinary medicine to treat their cows. Which is a shame, because I like their yoghurts and would otherwise buy them

[venta.livejournal.com]

I agree that does sound like a pretty foolish thing to do. A letter (http://theanswers42.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/yeo-valley-and-homeopathy.html) someone has blooged about from YV suggests that that's not quite it: they use conventional medicine when required and no treatment (ie homeopathy) when it isn't.

If they can provide satisfactory health and welfare standards for their cattle doing that, then I'm not sure I'm that bothered about it. A lot of cattle herds are routinely given antibiotics as a standard thing (rather than when they're ill), and I don't think that's good either. So if the cattle are healthy on this rather loony regime, is it a problem?

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

If that is what they're doing, then it's less harmful than it could be, but the way they go about marketing it is still a problem in that it legitimises superstitious nonsense.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree, I'm a bit disappointed in them, to be honest. Interestingly, the page on their own website about cows' welfare, etc, doesn't mention it (though it does mention that they only use antibiotics, etc, when necessary). So maybe they've learned not to tell people.

(The letters seem to be from last October, so it seems unlikely that they've stopped doing it already.)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

What is the difference between musesli and granola, anyway? – I've never known.

[condign.livejournal.com]

Limited edition yogurt. This has to be a triumph of marketing over any form of sense.