Spring Cleaning

Spring is here, and with it the urge to open the windows and clean out the dust of winter.

You might be feeling the urge to spring clean your insides as well. There are many cleanses at the health food store.

Or you could eat dessert.

A simple bowl of yogurt drizzled with honey makes a great dessert and nourishes the good bacteria in your intestines so they can spring clean too.

For the health benefits, use live, plain, organic yogurt and raw honey.

All yogurt is made with live cultures, but most is then heat processed which destroys the beneficial cultures. Look for one with “contains active yogurt cultures” on the label. I use Trader Joe's European-style plain yogurt.

The fruit in flavored yogurt breaks down the cultures before you can eat them. Also, a 6-oz container of fruit yogurt has the equivalent of 7 tsp of sugar.

(If you like fruit with your yogurt, add it just before eating.)

All dairy products naturally contain hormones. The non-organic kinds contain the extra hormones pumped into cows to increase milk production. Most supermarkets now carry organic dairy products. Ignore the price. Think of the health benefits.

For this recipe / cleanse, you want a yogurt the consistency of pudding. If it’s too runny, put it in a coffee filter or cheesecloth-lined strainer over a bowl so the excess whey drains out. This might take an hour. You can eat it right away or store it in a covered container in the fridge.

Honey is a great source of nutrients (including flavanoids involved in cancer prevention and antioxidants that lower cholesterol), but most are destroyed by heat processing. I buy raw honey from Martinez Apiaries at the Hollywood Farmers Market. Your health food store (and maybe your supermarket) will stock raw honey. (Don't feed honey to children under the age of one.)

Honey does not have to be organic. (Can you believe I wrote that?) Bees are killed by pesticides, so they don’t bring chemicals back to the hive.

Adding raw honey to yogurt enhances the growth, activity and viability of the good bacteria in the yogurt, multiplying the benefits as well as enhancing the taste.

Spring Cleaning Dessert
thick plain live organic yogurt
raw honey

Drizzle honey over yogurt. Eat with a spoon.

Yum.