Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Grape Salad


It has been a long while since I last wrote a post for this blog.  So long I can’t even remember what the last thing was I made up though I think it was the Honey Chicken Enchilada modified recipe.  Well here is another low cal treat.  The original recipe I got from my Aunt, not sure where she got it from.  It’s Grape Salad.  She’ll make up a batch for barbeques and it is so good.  Takes a lot of self restraint to not eat the entire batch she makes in one sitting.  It’s a big hit with everyone in the family.  So I thought I’d take a shot at modifying it.  The original recipe follows:

8 oz Cream Cheese
8 oz Sour Cream
½ cup sugar
1 Tbsp. Vanilla
Brown Sugar
Pecans
2 lbs. Grapes

So the grapes my aunt uses are red grapes typically.  I imagine any type of seedless grape can be used.  I stumbled upon this taste while eating breakfast one morning.  My wife and I have gone on this kick of Greek yogurt and granola in the morning.  We were out of Greek yogurt so I walked down to the store and picked up some.  It was a different brand from our usual plain vanilla so I had a taste of it.  It reminded me of the “sauce” of the grape salad. 

Using Philadelphia cream cheese it is 800 calories for 8oz, and if using Daisy sour cream it 1440 calories for 8 oz. Grand total for the sauce without including the rest of the recipe is 2240 calories. 

Now the reason I didn’t include the rest of the recipe is because I didn’t change the rest of that.  Instead I used 32 oz of Zoi Greek yogurt vanilla flavored.  32 oz of this yogurt is 880 calories.  That’s about two times fewer calories in the recipe using the Greek yogurt in place of the cream cheese and the sour cream.  When I made it though it was a bit too saucy for our liking so next time I’ll use only 16oz of the Greek yogurt which would be about four times as fewer calories for the recipe.  So here it is the modified recipe:

16 oz Zoi vanilla flavored Greek Yogurt (or your favorite brand)
Brown sugar
Sugar (about 4 tbsp)
1 tsp Vanilla
Brown sugar
2 lbs Grapes
Pecans

Take the yogurt and put it in a large bowl. 
Mix in the sugar (not the brown) and the vanilla into the yogurt. 

(These amounts will depend on your yogurt choice.  You want the mix to be a little sweet and you want to be able to taste the vanilla.) 

Add the grapes and make sure everything is well coated. 
Sprinkle with brown sugar and pecans. 
Let chill for about an hour.

I usually don’t wait for the mix to chill.  I like the texture of the yogurt brand I use.  The mix is a little thinner than if using the cream cheese mixture but the flavor and texture is very similar. This recipe makes sure you’ll make it through all of your grapes before they go bad.  And it really is tasty.  I wish I had some right now…

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