I’ve been on a yogurt kick lately. Not sure why. The kids have always loved smoothies. And periodically they’ll go through a flavored yogurt period, then it will end. But I almost always have plain yogurt around for cooking. I use it in place of sour cream or buttermilk for baking.

I recently bought a yogurt maker, although I know you can make it without a “maker.” It’s just easier to me and it was cheap enough. So I also bought a yogurt cookbook because I find that we tend to like things I make with plain yogurt, including pancakes and waffles, coffeecake, marinated chicken, or corn bread. Of course we like buttermilk, too. Something about that sourness!

So far I’ve made a couple of recipes from this book and really like it. There are recipes for everything from appetizers to soups to side dishes to various meat dishes and desserts. I started by making the “Garlic French Yogurt Dressing” and have used that in two different recipes so far.

Garlic French Yogurt Dressing

1 cup unflavored yogurt
2 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs lemon juice
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced

Mix it all up and chill. Use on tossed green salads, with cooked Swiss chard (cooked then tossed with the dressing, chilled and then served), and tonight I made a beet salad. This winter I roasted beets for the first time and one child loved them. I thought she might like the beet salad but it was a bit much for her. Oh well, I loved it! I saved a beet from the can and just sliced it up plain and the girls ate that.

Beet Salad
1 15 ounce can beets, diced
1/2 – 3/4 cup of the Garlic French Yogurt Dressing
salt and pepper to taste
minced fresh parsley or mint (I did the parsley)

This was such a nice side dish to the steak I made, cool and refreshing. I love pickled beets (well, pickled anything really!) but have not done much with plain beets until now.

Speaking of pickled things, my Persian neighbor called me over this evening to chat and ended up having me taste her pickled eggplants. Mmmm! I love eggplant anyway and with the pickled thing going, it was really good! She promised me a jar of her next batch. I can’t wait!