Like my family would have it, I turned vegetarian at the age of twelve. Those early years were difficult; I will not lie about it. My family ate a lot of meat, hence the last thing my mother wanted to do after a hard day at work was prepare two different dinners.
Obviously, there were more than a few evenings of side dining. Sometimes the only vegetarian thing on the menu when we went to dinner was french fries. More than one cookout, I recall eating PB&Js and chips while everyone around me dove into hot dogs and juicy burgers.
I started researching vegetarian cooking more seriously when I started college, but my meals more reflected the “carb-atarian” lifestyle; there’s only so much you can accomplish with a dining hall salad bar and a dorm microwave. My dietary awareness developed along with my growing enthusiasm and cooking ability. Though I still eat a vegetarian diet now in my 30s, my first concern is a balanced, high-protein diet. Along with tofu, seitan, textured vegetable protein (TVP), and tempeh, I love all things beans and legumes most of all.
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I buy and eat a huge tub of Trader Joe’s Nonfat Greek Yogurt every week. Every three-fourth-cup ounce serving includes seventeen grams of protein. Now, I normally sprinkle my salad with that much yogurt-based ranch or top my nachos with a whole serving of yogurt, but even just a few tablespoons increases the protein in a meal by a few grams and with a vegetarian diet every little bit counts. Though here are some of my go-to ways of utilizing strained yogurt to increase my protein intake, really it would be a simpler list to tell you what I do not include strained yogurt in.
Of course, I enjoy it with honey and berries for breakfast, but I also dollop it on a large bowl of oatmeal, mix it into smoothies and substitute it in place of sour cream in a breakfast burrito. A dollop of yogurt plus a squeeze of lemon with a good smashing makes a satisfying and balanced avocado toast if I have an avocado that seems a touch squishy.
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Strained yogurt is often an improvement rather than a substitute for other proteins for my noon meal and dinner. My go-to weekday lunch is a marinated lentil salad, but it will keep me full all day long when I spoon it over a scoop of strained yogurt along with some lemon zest. To have a protein-packed dinner, marinate tofu in oregano and lemon juice, grill it and present it with quinoa and a heaving amount of yogurt tzatziki.
And although a 100-gram portion of tempeh counts in at about 20 grams of protein, crumbled Buffalo tempeh over a bed of salad greens gets an extra protein boost when I drizzle it with some yogurt ranch. Including strained yogurt to the quick and easy dinners I already like helps me to have a high-protein diet without any additional effort.
