#6 - Eat a New Type of Food......

I was hesitant at first to consider this food different enough to be worthy of marking off one of my 50 Things to Do. Then I remembered.......

My blog. My rules.

When I put #6 on my list of 50 Things to Do, I had in mind some exotic restaurant or a recipe from a far-off land that I would be courageous enough to try. I thought as a last-ditch effort, I could try sushi for the first time in my life. I had an image of me holding my nose with one hand, chopsticks with the other, as I tried to make myself chew (you do chew it, don't you?) and swallow a bite of sushi.

That won't be necessary (still not impossible, however), thanks to one of my blogging pals, Midlife Swimmer. This is an incredible woman who has lost 153 pounds. That's right, 153. She is in the water all the time, either teaching swimming lessons, training, or competing. I figure she knows a thing or two (or a thousand) about eating healthy, and she frequently writes about the foods she packs to take when she's at the pool all day.

She mentioned Greek yogurt a few times, and to be honest I didn't know if that was a brand or a type. When Hubby and I were in the grocery store last weekend, I saw some Greek yogurt on sale (it still wasn't cheap, but I bought it anyway) just to try it.

I'm not a HUGE yogurt fan, but I do go through spells of eating it. This latest spell was brought about by a visit to Cracker Barrel for breakfast, if you can believe that. I really wanted the French toast with warm maple syrup and some hashbrown casserole and fried apples and biscuits and gravy and all that jazz, but I didn't want to sabotage my diet completely on one breakfast outing. Therefore I chose fresh fruit with yogurt and granola, and it was DELICIOUS. On my next trip to the grocery store, they had granola on sale, buy-one-get-one-free, so I thought that was a sign. I tried it with fruit and yogurt, and I tried just the yogurt and granola together. All were very good, and I consider it a healthy breakfast, as long as I don't get carried away with the granola.

This week I tried the granola and fruit with the Greek yogurt. Forgive me if I'm the last person on the planet to try Greek yogurt, but it was a pleasant surprise. It tastes a little stronger, for lack of a better word, than typical grocery store yogurt, and its consistency is thicker. I bought vanilla flavor, which isn't at all overpowering, yet the yogurt taste that dominates isn't yucky at all. (I've NEVER been a fan of plain yogurt. Blech.) It does have a few more calories than the grocery store brand, probably because the container is slightly larger than the ones I typically buy. I think those are probably "good" calories, though, and I'm not going to quibble over the calories in nonfat yogurt. It also has twice the protein of regular yogurt, and I'm guessing that's a good thing too.

I may try sushi (or something else exotic) before the year is out, but I may not. If I don't, eating Greek yogurt will just have to satisfy #6.