PastaQueen continues her quest to review every yogurt in the world.

Disclosure: I was sent samples of the Yoplait Greek Yogurt to review for this post.

Yogurt has become completely confusing. I remember the intimidation I felt when I first approached the dairy case over five years ago, trying to determine which type of yogurt was for me. There are a bazillion brands, and each brand offers a zillion varieties. Low fat! Non fat! Whipped! High fiber! And now Greek yogurt is popping up everywhere to confuse me even more. I need a yogurtoligist to explain all this to me.

When I was in London last year, I noticed that lots of shops offered Greek yogurt in their grab-it-and-go cases. I suppose the trend is catching on in America because now Dannon and Yoplait have launched Greek yogurt products. I am somewhat confused as to what qualifies a yogurt to be called “Greek.” It doesn’t have to actually come from Greece. I thought it just needed to be strained, making the yogurt thicker than other varieties. But I’ve also heard that you need to start the process with a particular type of milk, like ewe’s milk or goat’s milk, which have different milk fat percentages. Feel free to sort this out on your own. It’s all Greek to me.

Yoplait sent me some free samples of their Greek yogurt, which comes in four flavors: Strawberry, Blueberry, Honey Vanilla, and Plain. This is the fourth brand of yogurt I’ve reviewed on this blog, and I’m beginning to run out of things to say about the creamy substance. I thought the Yoplait Greek tasted fairly good, not that different from the Voskos or the Stoneyfield Farm varieties. It’s thicker than most other yogurts and it isn’t overtly sweet. The plain flavor was a bit too plain for my sweet tooth, so I mixed in some sweetener which made it more palatable.

I looked at the ingredient list and was happy to see I could pronounce all the ingredients on the label. I used to eat the Yoplait Light yogurt all the time because it was by far the most delicious of yogurts. Then one day I ruined it all by looking at the ingredients and saw that they used high fructose corn syrup to achieve that taste. If they’re adding sugar to the yogurt, it’s usually not a good sign for the health-conscious. So, the Greek yogurt seems like a better choice than the Yoplait Light. You can check the labels to see if the 12g-14g of protein is better or worse than your current brand. You can also use this coupon to save $0.30 on Yoplait Greek Yogurt.

Good luck in the yogurt aisle! You’re going to need it.

“Oh, no, that’s just my yogurt experiment,” I told her.

About a month ago MelPo left this comment on my Voskos yogurt entry:

Did you know you can make any yogurt thick–like the so-called greek yogurts that are so popular now? It’s just strained yogurt.

I do it by putting a couple of coffee filters in a colander over a bowl–dump the contents of a big yogurt (my fave is seven stars, but any kind, any flavor will work) into the filters. Then fold the tops of the filters over the top of the yogurt and put the whole bowl into the fridge overnight. The next day, take it out and dump the watery stuff from the bowl and open up the coffee filters and enjoy your thick yummy yogurt.

If you want it even thicker you can weight the top with something fairly light–like a can of soup or something and the resulting yogurt will be a cream-cheese consistency. It makes a delicious pie.

Intrigued, I decided I should try this. I got out a cup of vanilla flavored Dannon Light ‘N Fit yogurt, put it in a coffee filter set over a plastic cup, and stuck it in the fridge to freak my roommate out. When I checked it an hour later, the coffee filter was totally soaked, so I had to take it out and add two more filters to the contraption. The next day, it looked like this:

I tasted a spoonful of the strained yogurt, and it was a bit thicker than when I started, but it still wasn’t as thick as Fage yogurt. I looked in the cup, and at least two tablespoons of water had been strained out. Perhaps this experiment would go better if I started with a thicker type of yogurt to begin with. I dunno. I just know that I’m going to let the professionals handle the yogurt straining in the future.

PastaQueen reviews Voskos yogurt.

Disclaimer: Voskos sent me several coupons redeemable for their yogurt to write this review.

I didn’t start a blog with the intention of soliciting emails from all the major yogurt manufacturers in America, but I’m pretty darn close to achieving that goal. (Am I on some secret yogurt mailing list?) I’ve tasted Fage and StonyBrook Farm and Yoplait offered to send me samples too, but I turned them down because I’m not into the high fructose corn syrup they use. This month Voskos sent me some coupons, so the only major brand I think I’m missing at this point is Dannon, which is ironic because that’s the brand I buy most often.

Anyway! Since I reviewed the other yogurts, I thought it was only fair to give Voskos a go. I sampled several flavors of their Greek yogurt including the plain non-fat, plain original, honey vanilla bean, and blueberry.

As I expected, the plain flavors were too tart for my sweet tooth. However, if I mixed in some sweetener they were more palatable. The blueberry and honey vanilla bean were pretty good, but again, there was that tart flavor mixed in that I’m personally not a huge fan of, but I bet some of you would enjoy. The flavors are pre-mixed into the yogurt, so you don’t have to spend time stirring them up. This also assures that the flavor is evenly distributed throughout the yogurt. According to their web site, they offer several other flavors of Greek Yogurt including exotic fig, wild strawberry, and greek honey. I didn’t see any of those in the Whole Foods store near me where Voskos is sold, though the fig flavor sounds interesting.

You can find a store that sells Voskos here or just hit your local Whole Foods if you have one. If you are interested, you can also try your luck winning one of 10 coupons Voskos sent me for a free cup of their yogurt. To enter, leave a comment below naming a new yogurt flavor you would like to try. Feel free to be creative! You have until 11:59pm on November 2 to enter. I will draw ten winners randomly.

Don’t forget, you can still enter the Pepperidge Farm $100 Visa card giveaway too if you haven’t already, which is also open until November 2. Good luck!

PastaQueen reviews the Stonyfield Farm Oikos Organic Yogurt, reminisces about her grandparents’ farm, and gives away coupons, a pot holder, and a spatula.

Before my grandparents died, they bought the farm. After years of living in a small house in Princeton, Indiana, they purchased several acres and a farm house which I would visit back when I was only as tall as the kitchen counter. They had blackberries that we helped pick. They had cows that gave you mean looks. They had a creepy bathroom that was more frightening than any rest stop’s facilities. They sold eggs on the front porch whose shells were not a uniform white, but also brown and beige. The farm was dirty and odd and different from the city where I came from, but it was memorable and it had tractors. My best memory of my grandfather came when we were walking through the chicken coop together, gathering eggs, and he lifted up a chicken off its roost and tossed it halfway across the room. Who says a chicken can’t fly?

When we ate at my grandparents house, the food was different. The chicken wasn’t as plump as the ones from the stores. The green beans tasted nothing like the frozen veggies we got from the grocery. However, the angel food cake was delicious, thanks to the eggs from those flying chickens. I wish I could try eating those foods again, because what tasted weird and funny to my eight-year-old tastebuds might taste sweeter or more savory now. I didn’t know it, but I was eating organic food which was grown close to the earth like people had done for centuries before me. My parents had a farm, not a factory.

I saw the movie Food Inc. this weekend, and I recommend that anyone who had a problem with my cannoli entry never, ever see this movie or else you will have to retroactively vomit 80% of everything you have ever eaten. The film exposes the predatory business practices of the meat, corn, and soy bean industries, shows disturbing footage of how our food is made, and probably also has a negative effect on concession stand sales. It shows how food is grown in factories, not farms. It’s gross, really, really gross. If my grandparents had owned a chicken factory instead of a hen house, I would not be reminiscing about the good times I had picking up chicken corpses smeared in feces. Overall, the film emphasized the importance of organic foods to me in a way that ramblings from hippies never really has.

One of the “good guys” interviewed in the film is Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm and reformed hippie. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy who takes a bit of twisted joy from getting organic products onto Wal-Mart shelves. This reminded me that Stonyfield Farm had sent me coupons for their yogurt several months ago and I’d never done a review because my life got hectic. Last month I finally decided to grab some of there Oikos Greek Yogurt to review, but because I had moved to the south side of town, far away from the Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and Fresh Market, I couldn’t figure out where to buy it. Then a friend let me know that Kroger has a secret organic foods section away from the other foods, as if not to contaminate the organic yogurt with aspartame. So, if you can’t find this stuff in the yogurt section like I couldn’t, search for the organic section of the store.

I tasted the Oikos Greek Yogurt with Honey because I knew the tart taste of plain Greek Yogurt alone would turn me off. The honey is located at the bottom of the yogurt cup and you can mix it together with a spoon. It was yummy and the kitties licked the container clean. Like most Greek yogurt, it’s thick and creamy. It’s also nice to know that the cows that helped make the yogurt were like the mean cows on my grandparents farm and not the corn-fed cows writhing in their own manure like in the film.

Stonyfield Farm is giving away one prize package that consists of an oven mitt, a spatula, kitchen magnet and coupons for free and/or discounted yogurt. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment on this entry naming what your favorite farm animal is and why by Wednesday, August 5th at 11:59pm. A winner will be drawn randomly. US entries only please, because I don’t think the coupons will work in other countries. If you don’t win, it looks like they also give away coupons on their web site here.

I bought both the 0% and the 2% variety to compare tastes. I tried the yogurt in several different recipes. I ate it raw just to get a taste of it. I mixed it with some blueberries as a snack. I put it on some sliced peaches with cinnamon like Jen did. I also tried Kalyn’s recipe for Greek Yogurt with Agave Nectar and Pecans because just looking at the photo made me want to eat the JPG and burp up some pixels. I ate a lot of this yogurt in a lot of different ways.

I’m really sorry to say this, but it tasted like diaper rash cream.

Actually, I cannot say with 100% certainty that it tasted like diaper rash cream because I have never squeezed a tube of Desitin onto my peaches. Perhaps it tastes more like vaginal cream, but I’ve never snacked on Monistat either, so I can’t say for sure. I will say it tasted like what I imagine those products taste like. It was thick and sour and a very “meh” taste experience. I ended up dumping a lot of Splenda into my blueberry and yogurt mix because it was just too sour for my taste. The agave nector however was really great and I’ll definitely be using that on pancakes and devising other devious ways to sneak it into my meals.

I’ve never liked the taste of plain yogurt in any variety, so perhaps that is a factor in my dislike for Fage. I am, after all, the person who used to eat frosting straight out of the can and snacked on Kool-Aid crystals for fun. I like the sweet stuff. Fage ain’t sweet. It’s also possible that this product was built up so high in my mind that there was no way it could have met my expectations. I was disappointed that it not only didn’t taste good but that it didn’t also cure bad breath, wash my car, and pay all my bills. I was half-expecting to have an orgasm right in front of the dishwasher after eating a spoonful. That didn’t happen.

The only thing I could possibly see myself doing with Fage is using it as a substitute for cream cheese or sour cream in other recipes, assuming it is lower in calories. I know I am in the minority here and I’m sure I’ll get dozens of comments on this entry with recipes that I should try that will finally open my mind to the greatness that is Fage. But I am doubtful, people. I just don’t think it’s my thing.

Believe me, this is worse for me than it is for you because I shall always be on the outside looking in on your love for this yogurt, never quite understanding the appeal. I will be like the person who doesn’t understand the greatness of the original Star Wars trilogy or someone who can’t understand why a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer could ever be successful. Everyone will look at me and wonder, “What the hell is wrong with her? How can anyone not love Fage?” But that’s just the way it’s going to be. And that’s okay. I’m glad you all love it. Please, enjoy your Fage. But I think I’m going to pass it up, even if there is a freshly spilled container on the supermarket floor begging for me to lick it up.

* Random side note: One person commented in that thread that she makes her own yogurt. Wow, I thought I was hardcore because I make my own whole wheat bread (in my breadmaker), but I think the homemade-yogurt woman beats me.