Thursday

This was dinner tonight. Doesn't it look magnificent? Assorted fruit plate with fruit dip in a fruit bowl. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I am amazed.

Healthy Vanilla Fruit Dip
1 cup plain yogurt (I used the Greek. I've heard it's healthier than other plain yogurts but I have no actual proof outside of word of mouth. It was definitely drier than most yogurts which made it perfect for this recipe)
3 tablespoons agave nectar (The original recipe called for 2 tablespoons of brown sugar. However, since agave is healthier, I choose that. Also, I have a sweet tooth so I opted for extra, especially since brown sugar is sweeter than agave.)
vanilla extract to taste (The recipe called for 1 teaspoon but again, I have a sweet tooth so I added more. Unfortunately, I didn't measure, I just plopped some in until it looked right to me.)
If you use a wetter yogurt, drain it for a while and the refrigerate. This will make it thicker. The longer you drain, the thicker the dip. I did not drain or refrigerate. I simply scooped it from the tub to the bowl. It was delicious but I plan to try the drain thing next time to see how that goes. After you drain and fridge, mix all three ingredients together. Set aside.
Cut a large naval orange in half. Scoop out the inside guts. Slice a smidgen off the bottom of each half so that it will sit flat like a bowl. Divide up the dip between the two orange halves. Enjoy!

The Assorted Fruit Plate contains a wealth of health and tasty. The outside ring contains 1 mango and 4 strawberries. The middle ring is 2 bananas. The inside ring is 2 kiwis and 4 strawberrys. The center is seedless red grapes (I know, they look black.) The grapes are not superb dipping fruit, it turns out but they were magnificent all the same. The bananas and kiwi were my favorite to submerge in the dip. The strawberry and mango were best with a dip rather than a submerge.


Back up to lunch. I ate my avocado sandwich, a veggie baggie, and a fruit medley. The veggie baggie had about a fourth of a cucumber, half a celery stick, and half a carrot. I need to find a good replacement for
ranch dressing because that's all I could think about as I chowed down on the veggies. The fruit medley had a pair, a few strawberries, a banana, a few grapes, and a small orange. Back up one more meal. I had a small orange for breakfast. Fast forward to afternoon snack. I slipped up once today and ate a kolachi today at the local coffee shop.
I also drank a sweet iced tea. Oops. But it was only two kolachis (did I mention I had to have a second after the first? It was delicious.) and one sweet iced tea. Fast forward to after dinner snack. I bragged about the kolachi to Jason so we went back and split one. I had a vanilla Italian soda. It was very good to my taste buds. Very bad to my diet. Tomorrow night, veggie salad with a balsamic mustard vinaigrette I want to try.


Final things: I believe I promised a story about the dip. I have had sweet fruit dips before. They were delicious. I even felt good about dipping my fruit in them because I figured nothing served with healthy things could be unhealthy. Boy, was I wrong. The traditional sweet fruit dip has cream cheese and marshmallow creme. That's it. Equal parts cheese and creme! Seriously, that's terribly unhealthy. So, I began a desperate search for a healthy dip. I found a few that were pretty promising at first only to find out it was the same thing with a twist. I looked for what felt like ages (It was only a few hours). Finally, I stumbled across a recipe on kaboose.com All I had to do was sub out the brown sugar for agave and I was good to go! Even that substitution wasn't necessary, just preferable. Jason was a bit unsure about this dip because who ever thought of dipping fruit in yogurt? Haha. Well, Yoplait is on to something. Plain yogurt, something sweet, and some fruit is a rather delectable mixture. Glad I found this little secret!

'til 'morrow!
Vegggggg out