The barbeque season may finally be upon us here in New Hampshire (though, since it’s only the end of April, we can’t be 100 percent sure), and Chef Stephen here at Stonyfield Farm suggests that yogurt makes one of the best over-night marinades for chicken that is to be barbecued. The acidic nature of the yogurt tenderizes the meat. Just dispose of the yogurt marinade the next day, then grill with your favorite sauce. We’d love to hear about your tricks in cooking with yogurt. Get yogurt recipes or our recipe newsletter.
This week is spring vacation week for the kids in public schools in New Hampshire, and that means our Yogurt Works Tour & Visitor’s Center here in Londonderry, New Hamsphire, is really hopping. Child care providers and parents who know their kids need an outing have been dropping in at a steady rate for one of our public tours. On the first of many busy days, I got to tag along with a group of about 11 moms and 11 kids, including one breastfeeding infant. While I was quite interested in the fun fact, offered by Tour Leader Brian, that there are about 2,000 different types of strawberries in the world, the kids were more interested in watching some of those fruits being squeezed out of the big holding vat and into the bottom of our little cups, filling 240 cups a minute! Ooohs and aaahs, all around.
--Chris, Chief Blogger
Current yogurt obsession: Vanilla Smoothie
Our in-house chef, Stephan Hengst, works to develop recipes that use our yogurt products. You can see a lot of these recipes here on our website (and sign up to get them e-mailed to you).
Stephan says one of his biggest challenges to cooking with yogurt is not the cooking, per se, but in convince people that yogurt makes a great cooking ingredient. "Many people are not yet convinced that by using yogurt in place of oil in their favorite brownie recipe, they will still end up with a delicious fudgy brownie. Yogurt is seen as a 'health' food by many, but it also provides a way to make naughty foods like cakes, brownies and pies a little less naughty."
You heard it here first: Permission to be naughty.
As Lisa writes today over in our Dairy Planet blog, everyday is Earth Day here at Stonyfield, because taking care of the environment is key to our company's mission. But, Happy Earth Day anyway. We'd love to hear from you here. Tell us how you celebrated, and what little things you might do every day, in whatever corner of the world you're in, to take care of planet Earth.
Earth Day is a good time to mention again our Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which we produced in partnership with the Environmental Working Group.
Lisa also mentioned that our focus on organic foods is key to our environmental mission. Go here to learn more about organics.
--Chris, Chief Blogger
Current Yogurt Obsession: Vanilla Smoothie
So, I'm sitting in my blogging cubicle and I turn to the marketing
corner of the Stonyfield offices to find two grown men--Tim and
Peter—sitting at Tim’s nice conference table sampling baby food out of
jars, along with our own yogurt for babies. They’re each licking their little baby spoons very carefully. We’re constantly developing new products here and these two are apparently the first in a round of taste-testers. After this, actual babies will be the judges!
--Chris, Chief Blogger
Current yogurt obsession: Vanilla Smoothie
We asked Erin, in our Menu for Change program, before she hit the pavement if she was crazy, running her fourth Boston Marathon yesterday. Temperatures soared to near-record highs (great for spectators; not great for runners). Erin said, “I really enjoy running the marathon – it’s the closest I’ve ever come to having thousands of fans cheering my name – it’s such a rush!”
“Honestly, it sounds crazier to say that you’re running the marathon than it really is. I am a firm believer that anyone – of any fitness level – can run the Boston Marathon. I’m not going to lie - it’s tough. But if you have the mindset and follow the training schedule, anyone can do it – you just have to want to!!
"I’ve never been a “runner” – I’m a soccer player. When I first started running the Boston 4 years ago, I thought, 'I can never run 26.2 miles!' Then you start training and building your conditioning base, and pretty soon running 10 miles seems easy! Hard to believe, but very, very true."
So, today is the day after the run. Here's what Erin reports, from the comfort of her home:
"At Mile 2 when my legs started cramping (yes, Mile 2!!), I adopted a new mantra, 'Just finish.' At Mile 7, my legs were cramping so bad that I would lose feeling in my feet every time I started to run for a few minutes and the swelling in my hands was so severe that they were going numb as well.
"i honestly thought I was going to have to drop out, but then I saw my family at Mile 14 and I felt re-energized. Eventually I caught up to my brother-in-law and we got to finish together. It took me 5 hours and 50 minutes!!!! Can you believe I was moving for almost 6 hours – it was awful!!!! I would run, walk, run again.
"But I finished and I was glad I wouldn’t let myself drop out, despite the problems I was having. Overall, about 1200 runners dropped out – many of whom were elite runners, so I was glad I took my time and listened to my body to get me through to the end. Today, I’m sore but not as bad as I thought."
Yay, Erin! We're very proud of you!
Since last fall, lucky folks passing through Falmouth or Portland, Maine; Action, Massachusetts, or Portsmouth, New Hampshire, have been given a welcome respite from the omnipresence of unhealthy fast food along the nation's highways and main streets. O'Naturals, a small and growing chain of healthy fast food joints, was co-founded by Mac Mccabe and Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield's CE'Yo, and opened its doors last fall. The food--organic vegan and vegetarian, organic salmon and wild bison, and all-natural drinks, among many other things--is getting rave reviews. We'll tell you more about what it's like to run a healthy fast food joint a little later.
A few days ago, we wrote a little something in this blog about our really cool employee bathrooms here at Stonyfield Farm. In an effort to help you get to know us, we brought you inside our bathrooms, where the light switch comes on automatically (saving electricity when no one's in there), the water faucets turn on and off automatically (saving water), and the partitions are made of recycled plastic milk caps. One alert reader wrote us with this question:
Q: "Speaking of bathrooms, am I correct in assuming that you use composting toilets?"
Nancy, in our Natural Resources department, offers this answer:
A: "No, that would not be a correct assumption. For the offices, we had the plumbing infrastructure already in place, so installing composting toilets was prohibitively expensive compared to installing water efficient toilets. Composting toilets make the most financial sense in areas where there are no existing sewer or septic lines. During the design phase on our recent cooler construction project last summer, composting toilets were studied in relation to new toilets we were going to add in our shipping area. The sewer connection to those was not going to be easy. In the end, for a variety of reasons including cost, maintenance and hygiene, connecting conventional toilets to our existing sewer lines won out. Thanks for the question!
Nancy, Natural Resources
Today at Stonyfield Farm, we're cheering on Erin, who works with our Menu for Change program. She not only talks about healthy food, she practices healthy living by doing crazy things like running in marathons. Monday is the famous Boston Marathon, and Erin is running to raise money for the Tufts University President's Marathon Challenge Team. Proceeds go to support research in nutrition, medicine, and physical fitness. (We folks on the farm are kicking in a few bucks towards the effort, and we hope to win an in-house raffle as a result!)
This is Erin's fourth (yes, fourth!) marathon, but the first time she's actually run as an "official runner," because she qualified. In the past, she's been a "bandit" in the race.
Erin says, "I chose to be part of the team because I am a Tufts alum – a triple Jumbo in fact – and I wanted to give back to the University that supported me for 9 years. Plus I strongly believe that research in the above fields can make a difference for improving the health and well being of people across the country and worldwide. The school which I graduated from most recently – the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy – is the only independent school of nutrition in the world! They have amazing scientists and research staff that have impacted the lives of millions through their hard work and dedication to the field. But in research, funding is also tight so every little bit helps!"
Go, Erin!
One of our communications managers, Stephen, is also our resident chef. He is always at work trying to help our yogurt fans incorporate yogurt into their cooking by developing tasty recipes for them to try. Stephen writes, "I usually look for recipes that are seen as unhealthy--those that use excessive amounts of heavy cream, oil, mayonnaise, butter, cream cheese, or sour cream. Yogurt provides an excellent alternative to many of these ingredients that are traditionally higher in both fat and calories. I then work with these recipes to develop a method to substitute yogurt, in a way that still preserves the end result of the product (the taste and textures). An excellent example of this, is any of our cheesecake recipes. By using lowfat yogurt cheese (strained yogurt), in place of cream cheese, we eliminate hundreds calories from the final recipe - without sacrificing any of the taste."
You can sign up to receive Stonyfield Farm's recipe newsletter here.
One of the challenges we face in marketing yogurt to Americans is that Americans are just not as into yogurt as Europeans are. Europeans really look on yogurt consumption, with its beneficial cultures, almost like taking vitamins. Here in the U.S., we know that folks buy our yogurt because it tastes good and they get good boosts of calcium and protein. But those beneficial cultures are in there all the same. We add six of them, plus inulin, a natural dietary fiber that helps boost calcium absorption. Take our short course on inulin and cultures. Why do you eat yogurt?
Our Communications Manager here, Stephen Hengst, also has the secondary job title of "Chef." (Not your usual corporate job description.) Stephen is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and his father is a chef and restaurant owner. Stephen says he comes by his culinary expertise honestly. "We’ve always known that our yogurt eaters also enjoy cooking with yogurt. It is my job to develop new recipes, and make sure that our fans know about them by getting them placed in newspapers and magazines. Many of them also appear in our print ads."
Check out some of Chef Stephen’s recipes. Later, we promise to tell you how Chef Stephen goes about creating new yogurt-based recipes.
Visitors to our booth at the Made in New Hampshire event last weekend were reportedly enthralled by our smoothies (vanilla and tropical banana), and our YoBaby pear cups-- brand new in stores last week! Our Moo-la-la, which debuted last fall, was the biggest hit, however, especially the double chocolate, according to Scott in community marketing. (Scott sets up his big yellow sampling tent at hundreds of these kinds of events nationwide every year, and he gave away a million samples in 2003.) Everyone always enjoys meeting Gurt, our cow made of yogurt cups, but one young boy spent a lot of time peering anxiously at Gurt’s back end. Perhaps this child grew up on a farm and knew what to expect?
Carmelle, Communications
Current yogurt obsession: Peach Smoothie
Yesterday we debuted three of our healthy vending machines in San Francisco public schools, apparently to rave reviews. Scott, one of our regional sales people, reported that kids at the Lowell High School snarfed all the yogurts out of the machine within a couple of hours. We were just grateful the machines worked. (Like us, they can be tempermental after traveling). Yogurt wasn't the only thing offered in the machines. Kids could also choose granola bars, cereal bars, pretzels, 100 percent fruit juice, soy milk, trail mix, and dried fruit. Today the machines arrive in more schools in Santa Barbara.
Read more about the Stonyfield healthy vending machine program over in the Creating Healthy Kids blog. For another view of how vending machines might fit into the broader issue of combating the unhealthy habits of kids, read this report from the The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The refrigerator in the employee lunchroom here is well stocked with Stonyfield Farm products. It sure makes it easy when I forget my lunch at home or need an afternoon snack before my forehead hits the keyboard. Today I ventured in and chose “Fat Free Chocolate Underground.” Addictive. I recommend it with bananas. I’ve had it before, of course. I’m a loyal Stonyfield eater, but never for free. You can see where this is headed. Even too much of a good thing could lead to, well, too much of me. We once asked our nutritionist Vicki, to work out a healthy diet plan using our yogurts. You can see the results of her work, including a 1500- and 1900-calorie diet. Stop back here and over to our Strong Women Daily News and Creating Healthy Kids blogs for lots more daily updates on healthy eating.
--Chris, Chief Blogger
Current yogurt obsession: Vanilla smoothie
Spring made a tentative return to Stonyfield Farm last week. Robins and red-winged blackbirds, the early harbingers, are now hanging out in the trees that edge our parking lot. For this, we are grateful. As Gary, our "CE-Yo", is fond of saying, “New Hampshire is 11 months of winter and one month of bad sledding.” With the return of spring, I learned that cows get spring fever, too. Read all about spring on the farm over in the The Bovine Bugle, where farmer Jonathan Gates reports on his herd.
--Chris, Chief Blogger
Current yogurt obsession: Low Fat Creme Caramel Frozen Yogurt
On the day I started my job here one month ago, I got a tour of the yogurt production plant. (They made me wear a hair net and a red hard hat. Charming.) What really blew my mind was that the yogurt we make here becomes yogurt in the cup! In other words, it goes into the cup as milk, then turns itself into yogurt. Who knew?!
--Chris, Chief Blogger
Current yogurt obsession: Low Fat Creme Caramel Frozen Yogurt
As Chief Blogger here at Stonyfield, I am one of some 230 people, many farmers and, most importantly, thousands of cows involved in the process of producing 17 million (and counting) cups of yogurt a month. Since I'm new here, I'm trying to learn what it really means to work for a company which describes itself as "environmentally and socially responsible." We want you to get to know us too, and to judge for yourself. What better place to get to know us than our bathrooms? I’ll start there. Every time I step into the ladies room here I search for the light switch, forgetting that within one second, the motion sensor light will come on. It's a great, simple solution to the energy wasting problem of lighting up a room when nobody's in it. Our employee bathrooms also have these really funky partitions between the stalls. They look like something mod out of the '60s, and they are made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastic and milk bottle caps, which provide a nice marbling effect. (Ever seen that on Trading Spaces?) Watch this space for more about cows, bathrooms and making yogurt.
Chris, Chief Bogger
Current Yogurt Obsession: Low Fat Creme Caramel Frozen Yogurt
Today is a big day. We have two new smoothie flavors in the stores—vanilla and tropical banana. They join strawberry, peach, raspberry and wild berry. Also, our quart-sized, fat free yogurts just went certified organic. They had been “all natural,” (which is also good, don’t get us wrong), but now we’ve been able to find all the right organic ingredients. As with all our organic products, this means these new quarts are free of antibiotics, synthetic growth hormones, toxic and persistent pesticides, and fertilizers. Learn more about organics. We welcome your comments about our new products.
We conduct tours here at Stonyfield Farm’s Yogurt Works and Visitor’s Center. Carol, who books the tours, has been here nearly as long as the company. She says the most common question she gets from visitors is, “Where are the cows?” Unfortunately for our visitors, the cows are not here. Fortunately for the cows, they are off producing milk like crazy where they should be, on their own family-owned farms. Their milk gets turned into yogurt at our production facility, which is more or less at the end of a runway at the Manchester, New Hampshire airport. Those planes would scare the milk out of the cows. (They often scare us desk employees!) To learn more about where our cows really hang out, see The Bovine Bugle Blog and get up close with Farmer Jonathan Gates. We do have Gurt, Stonyfield's mascot, standing watch over us as we confab at the company conference table. She’s made out of yogurt cups. (Someday soon we must show you a photo of Gurt.)
--Chris, Chief Blogger
Current yogurt obsession: White Chocolate Raspberry Moo-la-la
Let me introduce myself as Stonyfield Farm’s Chief Blogger. I was hired to do this. Blog, I mean. They’re paying me. Upon hearing this news, my best friend from college e-mailed to ask if I had ever imagined, while sitting through yet another British Literature lecture 25 years ago, that I would one day have the job title of “Blogger.” Leave it to friends to point out the ironies in your lifestyle. I am thrilled to be here and thrilled to be blogging about everyday life—The Daily Scoop—at Stonyfield Farm. I’d love to hear from you in our comment sections, which would be only fair because you’re going to be hearing a lot from me.
Chris, Chief Blogger
Current yogurt obsession: White Chocolate Raspberry Moo-la-la