Welcome to the Empowered Kitchen. I'm Jenna Zaffino, your resident health coach of the patient and caregiver network wellness hub. And today, we're going to explore how to bring a little more pop to something that's relatively plain.
We're working with Greek yogurt that's plain or a yogurt alternative of your choice. So you can pick the base you like the most or the one that fits best with your dietary preferences or needs. And in this session, we're going to explore how to bring a little more flavor and fun to our plain yogurt, how to enhance the nutrient density for the biggest bang for our nutritious buck we can get while eating our yogurt. And lastly, to help us feel a bit more full for a longer period of time. So we feel like we've eaten something that's significant and that feels satisfying rather than just attending to our gut health, which is one of the benefits of yogurt, but we can have much more fun than that. So are you ready? Let's get started.
For our first dish, we'll be making something that I like to call power pudding. It's one of my favorite dishes to meal prep throughout the week because it's very easy to do beforehand. It's easy to just take out of the fridge and eat on the go or eat in a nice mindful way as we're sitting down having our morning. And it's relatively simple to put together but packs a powerful protein punch into the entirety of it. So that will help us have a little more energy for a little longer throughout the morning and often I feel better when I pack my breakfast with a good deal of protein to get that energy going. If you're working alongside me today, you'll need some plain Greek yogurt. You can also choose to do a nut based yogurt or a vegan yogurt if you're staying away from dairy. Anything will suffice as long as it's not flavored so we can add in our own level of flavor and texture and make it delicious. I'm also working with some berries of different shapes, sizes, flavors, and textures. I've got some freeze dried berries, I've got some fresh berries, I've got some strawberries, I've got some pumpkin seeds, some granola, some protein powder, chia seeds, and some natural peanut butter. And then I'm working with a plant based protein powder. This is vanilla protein powder, and then there's also some almond protein powder in here too. This is just my favorite mixture. It gives it a bit more of a a nutty consistency. It turns out along the lines of maybe like a butterscotch pudding,almost. So that's the protein powder I'm using. And then we're also going to need just a few drops. I've got a quarter cup of plant based milk and this is just in case it gets a little bit too thick and you want it to be more easy to pour.
All of these recipes can be found in the Empowered Kitchen library. So as we go through, you can look for those downloads and get what you need to prepare. Now, there are 2 rules in this kitchen. The first is imperfection is welcome. I am not a chef and I'm guessing neither are you. So hopefully, the techniques and the ideas that I offer in this video are going to be those that you can really adopt, make your own, and try to find as easily as possible. So you'll need a larger bowl for mixing and then I'm also gonna be using a hand mixer today but you can certainly do this with a spoon or a fork or anything you have, a whisk that's available for you. So we're simply gonna start by putting our yogurt into the bowl. Making sure we get all of it in there so we're nice and prepped. I'm gonna give the yogurt just a preemptive stir to kind of get it going and then I'm gonna take my protein powder. Now, again, the amount of protein powder you use is absolutely up to you. Certainly, this powder is gonna thicken it just a bit.
So we're gonna add just a little bit at a time and then give it a little mix to kind of fold it in. And you can see that it does start out as quite lumpy. This is the point at which I often get a little worried that I put too much protein into the pudding but do not despair because that's why we have our plant based milk. So it's definitely gonna thicken up. We're gonna put that milk in and then we're gonna smooth it out with the hand mixer. It's all dependent on the consistency you like to. If you happen to like a thicker yogurt, a pudding, then by all means go for it. We don't wanna waste any of that goodness.
Alright. We'll put our mixer over here, put this in the sink for later, and then we're gonna get ready to make a bowl. So the first bowl we'll put together is just going to be a basic parfait bowl. In terms of the serving size, we're going to go about 2 thirds of a cup or just 1 big glop and a half, technical terms, from here. And if you wanna add a little more, you can always add more. Now in a bowl like this, we've got about 17 grams of protein from the Greek yogurt alone, and then added in the protein powder. Now, we've added it into 2 cups, and there's about 10 to 20 grams per scoop of protein depending on which protein you use. So we can reason that this little bowl would pack maybe a punch of anywhere between 25 to even 35 grams depending on the type of protein you mix with it. And that is just wonderful for feelings of fullness, for muscle repair, for muscle growth if you're involved in an exercise program, and it's definitely a building block of energy that helps us feel like we've got some to use at the beginning of the day. Now here is my favorite part, the decorating, and I wanna show you one of the the tricks that usually gets the most applause whenever I show people what I do with strawberries. All it takes is a little straw, just a general straw plastic, not paper. Reusable preferably, and what we're going to do is take the straw and place it at the end of the strawberry. You work it through, and then you simply pop off the top. And then, you have more strawberry.
You can even take the bottom of the strawberry off and then just get rid of the head. But this is a really nice way to just take your, stems off your strawberry and it's kind of fun. Again, my son loves to do this one for me because if you get it perfectly, it pops off so nice and it's quite satisfying. I'm gonna go ahead and stack some
strawberries in there. And there we go. So, first layer complete. Now we move on to the next. I've got some granola here and I'm just a granola lover. There is a high sugar content in granola but a few sprinkles for a little crunch is gonna be just fine for us. So I'm gonna just do a little layer of that granola underneath the strawberries. We've got some almonds in there for a little play off of the almonds. Alright. Now, I'm gonna
do another layer of berry and I mentioned for my meal prep that I'm gonna do the freeze dried berries. For this one, I'm gonna use some fresh berries. So I'm going to use my blueberries and just line them up like so. So what I have here for different options for a little fat are some natural peanut butter and or some pumpkin seeds.
Now, I've been on a pumpkin seed kick, so I think for this one, I'm just gonna add some pumpkin seeds to the end. And, yeah. I'm liking the way this is looking. It's like a little stem. Now, lastly, I have some flaxseed and chia seed. I like to add a little bit of my omega fatty acids to my bowl just to kind of make sure I'm getting in all of those nutrients, but I do know that both of these tend to be polarizing. People either love them or they don't like them so much. So you can use yours liberally or you can find a different way of maybe adding some of that peanut butter. And I just like to sprinkle it on. It's got a nutty flavor. I just put it over the top, sprinkle on the chia seeds. You can add as much as you like, and you can also create almost like a little gelatin layer if you like by mixing the flaxseed or the chia seed with a little, plant based milk or water until it gets a little more jelly.
That's the piece that is not my favorite, but I know a lot of people who love it. So some people do a pudding base, a jelly base, and then their fruit and etcetera on top. Alright. So that's our first bowl, and now it's time to take a little bite of that goodness, my favorite part.
It's so good, and it's so easy, and it almost feels like you're having a bowl of ice cream. Now, if you wanted to sweeten it up a little bit more, take a teaspoon of honey, which I have right here, and you can just drizzle a little honey along the top and you will be good to go. It doesn't take that much because hopefully, your protein had a little sweetness in it. Alright. So that's our basic bowl. Now, we're moving on to our meal prep bowls.
