For the Love of Yogurt

I have a confession to make: It's likely this comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I'm not all that great a cook. Oh, I've a few dishes I can do justice to -- but not many.

Mostly, it comes down to not having the time/opportunity to try my hand at it all that often. If practice makes perfect, I'm light years from perfection. (Don't even get me started on the time my darling daughter suggested I should maybe "take lessons from Grandma" after I placed her favorite-meal-of-the-moment in front of her. She was still little and awfully cute so I refrained from grounding her for that.)

That said, I do like to cook. And that was another of the appeals of the Mediterranean Diet. The book came with 28 days worth of menus and recipes -- most of which have been fairly easy to follow, even if they do call for a variety of ingredients I'm not used to cooking with. I've not stuck remotely close to the "schedule," but I have continued to try the various recipes -- at least the ones that didn't make me shudder in revulsion. (There are some, like the "Mussels Provençal" which are just not going to happen.)

Tonight for dinner, I tried my hand at the Spicy Carrot-Ginger Soup (It's billed in the book as the Day 11 Lunch but I genuinely have to wonder who has the time or the inclination to make such elaborate lunches?) For some reason, the recipe was designed to serve 10. Which makes zero sense since the rest of the recipes serve 1 or 4.  Eyeballing it, I gambled on quartering it.  Except that I didn't sufficiently quarter the cayenne pepper. I think I halved it instead - more on that in a moment.

The recipe called for carrots -- "peeled and roughly chopped." I used pre-packaged carrot chips (because I'm lazy) and freeze-dried ginger, rather than fresh (also because I'm lazy). The biggest question mark for me was the pureeing part. Everything heated up just fine in a pot on the stove but I was a little skittish about dumping the soup mixture into the blender. Ultimately, though, I realized trying to eat it sans pureeing was going to be a yucky disaster. So I gave it a go and it actually turned out pretty good. Nice consistency.

The recipe also called for plain Greek yogurt to dollop on the top of the finished product but somehow, the cup of yogurt I'd been saving just for that disappeared. Neither David nor Riley profess to know anything about it and it is nowhere to be found in the fridge so the only thing I can surmise is that I absentmindedly pitched it. I feel like I'd have made a mental note of that if I had since I knew it was called for in this recipe. But I've searched high and low to no avail. I did finally skim some off the top of a blueberry yogurt in the hopes of cutting the aforementioned cayenne fire. It sort of worked. And it wasn't awful, though it was a bit of an odd juxtaposition of tastes. 

Overall, it was tasty and something I'd try again -- with less cayenne and more plain Greek yogurt (or maybe even sour cream). I paired the soup with the recommended whole wheat pita stuffed with 1/2 avocado, kalamata olives, and hummus. Had the avocado been a tad less mushy, it would have been perfect. Guess maybe I don't need as much practice as I thought!