A goat.

We have all heard of goat cheese and I am pretty sure many of us love it…if you don’t, I’m not sure we can be friends. But goat products (soaps and lotions) and goat meat??? I’m not so sure about that….

So a few weeks ago my mother was talking about goats milk soaps and lotions. She mentioned that she had heard of people using it a couple years ago but really wasn’t a fan of the way it smelled. It was sold sparingly and wasn’t too popular. Fast forward to now and you will see goats milk products at every farmers market and many local stores in Vermont (probably other states too but I haven’t paid much attention-I bet you can get the product at any natural foods market to be honest).

Now I haven’t paid much attention to the goat milk craze until I was reading Psychology Today this past Sunday and there was an article about goat MEAT. I instantly thought of my mother and what she was saying about the products created from goat MILK. Now I cannot imagine eating a goat but I guess they are extremely popular in Greece, the Caribbean and South Asia or as Psychology Today said, “consumed regularly by 70% of the world’s population.” I guess it is one of the leanest meats available, is low in cholesterol, calories, unsaturated fat and sodium while having a high amount of potassium and iron.

Apparently there is a difference in the breed of goat for milk versus meat…one is bread for milk production and the other for meat. Those goats bred for milk production are very gamey. I personally have never had anything gamey so I wouldn’t be able to judge the flavor.

So as I am reading this article it switches from goat meat and how it is becoming ever more popular, to goat milk, yogurt and ice cream. All of which are perfect for those who are allergic to cows milk. I guess it has a creamy richness that is out of this world. Now I am not a huge milk drinker (of any animal) and eat yogurt so sparingly that I sometimes forget it exists, but after reading this article, my taste buds got a little curious.

Knowing that I would be heading to Whole Paycheck (I mean Whole Foods), I decided I would take a look at the yogurt section for this goat milk yogurt. I had to search pretty aggressively to find it as the number of yogurt products out there is just so overwhelming that its no wonder I just stopped eating it all together. After looking for about 2 minutes (it seemed impossible to find among the what seems like thousands of brands, flavors, fat content, milk source…ugh), I finally found the TWO companies that makes yogurt from goat milk. There were flavors just like any other yogurt company: vanilla, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry and plain. I don’t like added sugar to my yogurt so I grabbed the plain. And I figured that I would be able to get the full flavor profile if I chose plain. So I grabbed this one…

As I said before it was one of two brands of goat milk yogurt and it’s impossible to tell that it is in fact made of goat milk as the writing is so small that even a teenager would need spectacles to see it. My eyes then wander to the left and I see sheep milk yogurt….hmmmm. Next thing I know I have goat milk yogurt (bottom), sheep milk yogurt (middle) and grass fed cow yogurt (top).

So I decide to conduct a little taste test after dinner, which was PHENOMENAL by the way. I postponed veal burger night to last night because I had so much salmon left over from Sunday and it was sooooo worth the wait!

Veal burger stuffed with peppers, panko, onion and parsley and sandwiched with mozzarella in a lovely whole wheat pita bread. Those chunky looking things on the bottom left are white, or rather pale yellow sweet potato parmesean rosemary french fries. Honestly, the pale yellow sweet potatoes are undeniably better than the orange sweet potatoes – at least on this little girl’s taste buds. I have never seen them before but found them at Whole Paycheck and decided to give them a shot…I WILL be going back for more! Also, had a nice little spinach salad with asparagus – hello stinky pee 🙂 (I’m sorry, I make myself laugh every time I think about that. Laughing is healthy just like asparagus!), red and yellow peppers and grape tomatoes.

Anyways, back to my goat milk chat with myself last night…so I decided to conduct a taste test comparison. I mean come on, what else am I going to do on a Tuesday night as a single gal? I lined up my yogurts with a separate spoon for each one and water to clean my palate between yogurt tastings. Here are my findings:

(I added the pictures again just so you wouldn’t get confused and so that you would know what to look for if you are so inclined to do a taste test yourself)

Grass fed cow yogurt- Watery and bitter, just as I had expected. I could eat it but it is not my favorite.

Sheep yogurt – Rotten and sour, cottage cheese consistency (which I love) but less chunky which was just weird. Absolutely disgusting that I almost spit it out and it smelled bad. All I could think about was a sheep (don’t seem to have as much of a problem with goat yogurt as you will see) and for some reason that turned me off. Or maybe it was the fact that it was just gross to begin with…it quickly went in my trash.

Goat milk – Thick, flavorful, smooth finish. Very similar to greek yogurt which I LOVE. That thick, creamy consistency that has just enough flavor to make it so that I am not tempted to add anything. I am officially in LOVE with goat milk yogurt. In the same serving size it has less calories and less fat but the same amount of protein as cow and sheep yogurt. It tickled my taste buds juuuuuust right. I was already extremely stuffed even before my taste test so I decided to eat just a little and put the rest back into my fridge for my midnight snack habit that I cannot seem to break.

All in all, give goat milk yogurt a shot. YOLO, right?!?!