Yesterday was Day 2 of not getting around to buying ice cream. However, I did buy a bunch of lovely fruits and vegetables and other much-needed items, so my meals were a lot better than the previous day’s messes. The standout was a whole wheat wrap with hummus, baby spinach, tomato, roasted pepper, grated carrot, sprouts and a little cut up baked kabocha squash—it was perfect alongside a bowl of Trader Joe’s split-pea soup.

What’s funny about the ice cream thing is that I don’t even eat it that often, but knowing that it’s not there makes me curious about ways to make similar things. To be totally honest, studying ice cream processing for a recent Food Science & Tech exam has turned me off to the stuff, though I’m sure that’s temporary. Give it a few weeks.

Sometimes the more I learn about something the more I want to eat it, but sometimes the opposite happens. And besides, when I was at the store, I just didn’t feel like paying six bucks for a carton of 20 ingredients I could barely pronounce. Maybe it’s time to suck it up and start paying full price for something that’s a higher quality…

In general, I feel like dessert is a chance to enjoy a little treat once you’ve met most of your nutritional needs for the day, but it can also be a good chance to fill in a few blanks. The night before, I’d made the frozen banana soft-serve, so last night I figured I’d try something a little different, with chocolate perhaps? What I ended up with was sort of like chocolate mousse but more convenient, since it gave me a lot of the calcium I hadn’t gotten earlier in the day.

Ingredients:

1 cup plain yogurt (you could use vanilla too)

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp cocoa powder

sweetener of choice (I used Splenda because that’s what I had but honey or maple syrup or regular sugar could work)

Directions:

Whisk (don’t use a blender) ingredients together and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Serve with garnishes of choice. I went with layers of sliced banana and topped it off with a little wheat germ, which seemed (in theory) sort of close to crumbled vanilla wafers or something. A couple teaspoons of chocolate syrup got involved near the bottom. This actually tasted better than I thought it would (I’m sorry the photo is so bad!). I  might make it again sometime, try it with different add-ins perhaps…