Parfaits with Yogurt, Berry & Granola

by Susie Middleton

It's easy to throw together a parfait for a quick snack, but you can also assemble a few ahead and refrigerate them for later.

Ingredients

6 Tbsp. good-quality yogurt from goat, sheep, or cow milk
4 Tbsp. simple maple or honey granola (without nuts or fruit)
1⁄2 pint raspberries and blueberries or other seasonal berries
local honey (optional)

Susie Middleton

Breakfast, snack or dessert? A parfait of yogurt, berries, and granola is a delicious 3-minute solution.

Put 3 Tbsp. of the yogurt in the bot- tom of a sturdy 8-ounce wine glass or other attractive glass. Sprinkle 2 Tbs. granola on the yogurt and arrange about 16 berries on the granola. If your granola or berries are not very sweet, you can drizzle a bit of honey on at this point. Repeat the layers with the remaining yogurt, granola, berries, and honey (if using). Serve right away or chilled.

This could be you At Home with Goats

While Joyce Maxner is a newc omer to the constellation of Island goat lovers, she may be the most enthusiastic. After reading Barbara Kingsolver’s best-selling book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a few years ago, Joyce decided to commit to eating more local food and to growing more of her own food.

Joyce and her husband, Steve (they are music people— she a singer, he a guitarist) have gracefully parceled up their 1.5 acres into animal and vegetable areas, and they still have a nice lawn and a little stage for their informal music jams called Chicken Stock. Joyce grows enough vegetables in her raised beds to feed the two of them and their five visiting grown children throughout the season. She has hens for eggs, and now, Willow and Spirit—two Alpine dairy goats courtesy of North Tabor Farm. This spring, Willow gave birth to two healthy kids, a male (Alfredo) and a female (Lily). Despite naming the male, Joyce is quite prepared for the idea that he will most likely be a goat roast later this summer. When Joyce first got the goats, she had a few sleepless nights. “Am I crazy? Am I nuts?” she thought. But soon she had fallen into a rhythm of rising at 5:45 a.m. to milk the goats, and now she says, “Milking is meditative for me. I love it.” Most weeks, she makes fresh cheese and yogurt from her milk. She learned cheesemaking by taking the same class that Barbara Kingsolver did, from Ricki Carroll, the owner of New England Cheesemaking Supply Company in Ashfield, Mass. Joyce highly recommends Carroll’s book, Home Cheese Making, which includes an easy method for making fresh chevre.

Joyce couldn’t be happier with the way things have worked out. She grew up on a small farm in New Jersey and feels like she’s coming back to where she was as a child. “I just feel, in this time, that we all need to be thinking about ourselves in a different way. I think we need to honor the food we’re given.”

No cow required Get Your Goat Milk

GOOD FOR YOU

Goat milk has a number of advantages over cow’s milk. It’s more digestible because of its smaller fat particles.
It doesn’t produce acid and has been used to treat ulcers because of its buffering abilities
It contains a higher amount of the medium-chain fatty acids that are highly anti-microbial, and it is tolerated quite well by people with allergies.
It is a rich source of the antioxidant mineral selenium.
It’s a great choice for young children.

TO PASTEURIZE OR NOT?

Most folks who raise their own goats choose to drink raw, unpasteurized milk because it contains more health-giving enzymes, vitamins, and antibodies than pasteurized milk. They don’t mix their milk with any from other herds, and they are likely following Sue Hopkins advice to “keep it clean and cold.”
They wash their hands and the goat’s udder before milking.
They milk directly into a filter-lined stainless steel pail, and they chill the milk immediately, either in a water bath, the freezer, or in smaller containers in the fridge.
They make sure their animals stay healthy
People who milk goats at home can have some control over the kinds of contaminations that pasteurization was originally created to kill. However, there is never a 100% guarantee that raw milk will be pathogen-free, so some folks like to pasteurize their milk at home. This is not hard (it involves heating the milk to 145 degrees and holding that temperature for 30 minutes). The method is in Ricki Carroll’s book, Home Cheese Making.

WHERE TO BUY

What if want to try goat’s milk—but not the goats? You can buy pasteurized goat’s milk (Meyenberg is a popular brand) at grocery stores like Cronig’s.
You can make fresh goat’s cheese from this milk, too.

NO SELLING UNLESS YOU HAVE A LICENSE

It’s important to know that you cannot legally sell milk or cheese, either raw or pasteurized, without going through the extensive licensing process.

Related Recipes:

Herb & Lemon Marinated Goat Cheese Appetizer