A cool breakfast for a hot morning : Mixed Berry Salad with Goat Yogurt and Maple Syrup

Oh.

My.

Blog.

It's so hot here in New York City I am sweating in places I thought I couldn't possible sweat. It's just ridonculous and made worse for the fact that I do not have at the moment I have nothing but fans to cool the apartment down. Our A/C is on the fritz and they won't come to fix it until tomorrow.

Ugh.

So in pondering what am going to eat, my first order of the day has been to avoid turning on the stove at all costs yet eating something beyond the cereal bowl full of blahs.

Which is why I went to the Farmers' Market yesterday.

It's that time of year when we can live like locavores and just eat what's farmed in our area. Also, eating raw, fresh stuff from the farmers' market keeps you away from the stove and hence makes you sweat less.

Yet, you'll probably say, this is not a real recipe!

Well, it's about friggin's time I start posting recipes here on culturekitchen. As a good cook, it's hard for me to part with my recipes and kitchen secrets. Yet you'll see, as with this non-recipe, that I will be using products you may well have never considered to use before.

Case in point: Goat yogurt.

Years ago my son was diagnosed as being "lactose intolerant". When we saw the laboratory results it specifically said "Cow". I asked the doctor what did it mean. He said that usually these kind of allergy tests check against common foods. Most people in this country drink and eat cow milk products and so that's what the tests focus on. I then asked, what about goat or sheep. He looked at me with the "you're brave" face and he said to try it. Yet it confirmed my suspicion that "lactose intolerance" has mostly to do with cow milk protein and not necessarily all lactose.

Now, I want you to understand why we needed to try it. Thing #1 was a couple of months shy of his 2nd birthday when this happened. He was by all intents and purposes still a baby. He needed calcium in some way since eggs, most shellfish and raw soy proteins were completely out of the question.

So we went out and tried the goat yogurt first, since yogurt was one of his favorites at the time. It was hard to do the transition, but I have to tell you, we all notice the difference.

Evan was born with the allergies because I developed them during his pregnancy --and yet I didn't know it. So I spent 2 years after his birth and another 2 after my second son's birth, feeling sick all the time. I was always exhausted, my stomach was a mess. I couldn't digest anything properly.

Once I cut out everything from my diet that he can't eat (and that's about 17 different food classifications, by the way), all my ailments were gone. I got my energy back. I even lost weight.

So this is going to be the first on a string of recipe and well-being posts because this is more about me finding more people who have these food and health issues than for me to pontificate about it.

And let me tell you, once you go goat, it's hard to go back to cow dairy. I notice the difference in taste and, indeed, in digestability. It's almost impossible for me to digest cow products anymore.

And, quite frankly, the goat yogurt has such a smooth a creamy quality that it's only found in imported yogurts. I love the classic quality of the Redwood Hill goat yogurts. For that reason only, you should try eating it the way I describe below.