Z Food Adventure- Peanut Butter Cookies and Cream Frozen Yogurt

          Along with good old going places and seeing things adventures, I also enjoy adventures that happen close to home or in the kitchen.  I'm living on my own for the first time this fall and that means that I can either eat prepared meals bought in stores or I can make my own.  For the most part I love eating lots of fruits and veggies throughout the day.  They put me in a better mood and I feel like I have more energy when they are the majority of what I eat.  Now, I eat my veggies with very liberal amounts of dip, so that adds some unhealthiness to the healthy factor, but I'm not worried about that.

          Today's adventure starts online.  I decided to give Pinterest a try and I joined late this summer.  I heard how useful it was for putting a bunch of links in one organized place for me to use whenever I need.  So I got on and started pinning housework tips and food ideas.  Then of course I started pinning all the random glorious fun things out there, too, and haven't stopped.  But what use is Pinterest if all we do is pin things?  Aren't these links here so we can actually use them?  That started me on my food adventures.  I started placing specific recipes that I wanted to try on Z Food Experiments.  I've had a lot of success with those recipes.  If you're on Pinterest and haven't tried anything you've pinned I urge you to pick something and try it this week.  You'll feel like all those hours spent surfing and pinning are no longer a waste of time.

          All the fun I've had in the past couple months in the kitchen got me thinking: if people are posting their kitchen ideas on Pinterest I would like to share my successes and failures, too!  That's right, I am not afraid to share a failed idea.  It might save someone else time by preventing them from making my same mistakes.  So today I share with you a failed idea and tips on how to potentially improve on it.

Peanut Butter/Cookies and Cream Frozen Yogurt

My camera does not take very good indoor pictures, yet. I'm still working on that.

          I saw recipes on Pinterest for making your own ice cream using bananas or various yogurts so I thought I'd give it a try.  My fridge is sadly very empty right now.  I am out of all fresh fruits and veggies, and the rainy weather has prevented me from wanting to go out and buy groceries.  So I've been getting creative with what I do have.  Yesterday I added canned mandarin oranges and an orange flavored Emergen-C packet to plain yogurt.  That was very yummy and the Emergen-C made the yogurt fizz a little so it had a slight tickling of the nose effect.  Since I am lacking fruits and veggies in my diet right now I figured adding vitamins in an alternate way was a good idea.  I would bet kids would enjoy taking vitamins that way, too.  That idea gets an B+ on my grading scale below; I'd like to try adding a bit of cottage cheese or make cottage cheese the main part of it next time.

          I still have lots of plain yogurt left and the expiration date is nearing so I figured today I would see what adding peanut butter can do to yogurt.  I added a forkful and tasted it and was quite pleased.  So I added more yogurt and more peanut butter and decided, why not, let's add three Oreos and see what happens.  Well good news/bad news.  Good news: the peanut butter flavor certainly comes through!  Bad news: too much peanut butter!  I realize now why in peanut butter ice creams they don't put much in.  It does not take much peanut butter to get plenty of flavor.  So don't add two or three very large forkfuls to your cup of yogurt, that's too much.  I can't really taste the Oreos, either and that's sad.  I tried it right after I made it and after freezing it and either way the peanut butter is just too much.  It becomes very creamy yogurt, though!

One cookie broken and mixed in, 2 cookies still whole and moistening.

          So it is not a total loss and if I added more yogurt I could probably fix it, but I think a cup of yogurt is enough to eat in one day.  Vanilla yogurt might be better, too, to add more sweetness.  If you're wondering, leaving it in the freezer about an hour was not quite long enough to completely solidify it.  So if you want to try this you  might expect to wait 2 or more hours to get a good frozen yogurt.  I think I'm going to try mixing strawberry jelly in the yogurt and freezing that next time.  I'd also like to try a peanut butter and jelly frozen yogurt.  If I do, I'll let you know how it goes!

          If I'm going to start making foods it might be helpful to have a way to judge the results.  Below is my initial grading scale that I'll use to rate my food adventures.  Today's recipe receives a C+ meaning it has potential to be much better, it isn't bad, but the idea of eating the entire dish doesn't excite me.  I love peanut butter and like yogurt so I will try this again with modification, and when I do I'll come back and edit this blog with a footnote to let you know how it went.  I'll also try to be more precise in my measurements so you can try it if you want.

Food Adventure Grading Scale: 

A- Excellent! Definitely plan on making it again.

B-Tasty success, might need slight adjustment to reach perfection but is good the way it is.  Make again.

C- Has potential for greatness but after X amount of bites eating becomes a chore.  Will try again with modifications.

D- Can't finish it without immediate modification, won't try again.

F- Not worth trying to fix and won't eat another bite.