Baked Greek Yogurt Cups with Honey + Pistachios

A healthy, make-ahead dessert. Plus! What to read, listen to, and buy this week.

Hello, from my standing desk, where I am trying not to obsess over my stress-induced back pain (clearly, I am failing).

You know what’s worse than having back pain? Being told that, “back pain is emotional.” To all of you smug, highly-evolved people who have read, and apparently been cured by, “Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection,” point taken! No amount of Deep Blue (an incredible upgrade of Icy Hot), magnesium, or cupping is going to address the root cause of the problem — stress!

When I was a kid, my parents forced me to take a Transcendental Meditation course. I was given a mantra and told to sit still for 15 minutes every morning and night. There was just one problem: as my father put it, I’ve got shpilkes. Nowadays, they would just call it ADHD, but shpilkes is the Yiddish word for “pins,” as in, “pins and needles.” I loathe stillness. I cook and write at the same time, and conduct my most focused conversations while rocking on the floor in Happy Baby. (As I write this, I just popped out to harvest my grapes and start the process of making verjus, the pressing of unripe grapes. I am now freezing the juice into cubes so I can use them for vinaigrettes and cocktails). Much to my detriment, I have been rewarded for my compulsive tendency to multitask.

Left: Fresh picked muscat grapes. Right: unfiltered muscat juice, aka “verjus.” The French use verjus in dishes that require a more mild acidity than citrus.

The shpilkes is my drive, and apparently, it will be my downfall. Who would I be if I wasn’t spinning plates? That is between me and my therapist, but if any of you have suggestions for ways to ease into meditation, I would love to hear. For now, I am doing guided meditations (lots of body scans) on the CBT-i Coach app with the Celluma red light panel wrapped around my low back, and trying not to judge myself for being “bad” at it.

This week, I am sharing a recipe for a baked yogurt cup that can be made ahead for breakfast (high protein!), or served as a healthy dessert with honey and a bunch of toppings. But first, What to listen to, read, and cook with this week.

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LISTEN

Podcasts are an essential part of my parenting routine. They’re an escape into a story time of my own while staring at the ceiling waiting for my son to fall asleep, packing backpacks, or cleaning up my war-torn home at the end of the day.

During night feeds with my second child, I binged every episode of Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett’s podcast, The C-Word. The two friends deliver gossipy retellings of the rise and fall of notable women in the pop cultural cannon, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Winona Rider. It’s dishy, it’s silly, but I actually learned a lot.

More recently, I have been plugging in to The Curious History of Your Home. In this very British series, each episode is dedicated to a single, ubiquitous household object or quotidien custom. Domestic historian Ruth Goodman somehow weaves a thrilling tale of say, windows, from their inception to modern day status. My favorite episode was, predictably, the one about dinner parties, with its shocking portrayal of a popular Victorian obsession: procuring Egyptian mummies on the black market and unraveling them at dinner!  

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READ

J Wortham’s article in The New York Times Magazine was a thoughtful look at a recently published biography of Audre Lorde, “Survival Is a Promise,” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. The new book frames the poet and activist in terms of her relationship to ecology, from her life’s work to her eventual death from cancer, caused by exposure to toxins while working in a Keystone Electronics factory. Wortham says that Lorde, “viewed her work, her life — even herself — as compost, dense matter to enrich the soil that future generations of writers, activists and artists would grow from.” (Naturally, I appreciate any use of compost as metaphor). I am looking forward to reading Gumbs’ book, and thinking more about the intersectionality between feminism and environmentalism.

Image from The New York Times Magazine

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COOK

I like to do a fair amount of after hours baking, preparing muffins, banana bread, or crepe batter (it relaxes me). Too often, I get all revved up about a recipe only to find that I don’t have buttermilk, the magic ingredient in so many baked treats. Buttermilk makes things fluffy and tender. Its acidity reacts with baking soda to create carbon dioxide bubbles that cause batter to rise. Furthermore, buttermilk weakens gluten proteins in flour. That’s why we so often see buttermilk added as an ingredient in otherwise dense quick breads and pancakes.

While I have been known to drink a glass of buttermilk straight-up (not dissimilar from kefir), most people use it for a given recipe and then let it languish in the fridge. Solution! If you have a quart of buttermilk, use what you need and then freeze it in 1 cup portions for later, labeling it with sharpie and masking tape. Even better, I recently discovered Bob’s Red Mill powdered buttermilk -- shelf stable and brought to life with a little water in the blender. Now, anything is possible.

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Yogurt Mousse with Toasted Pistachio

Light and airy with that unmistakable yogurt tang, this is such a nice healthy dessert or indulgent breakfast for the whole family. High in protein and with no refined sugar, make these individual cups ahead and keep them in the fridge for the week. Toasted pistachios are gorgeous on top, and for even more character, caramelize them with some cardamom and a little maple syrup.