Whew. I just got back home to D.C. — what an awesome, whirlwind weekend!
This morning, as our last stop (sniff, sniff) on the Blogger Barnstorming Tour, we headed to Stonyfield itself for breakfast!
It was pretty much yogurt tasting heaven.
We even got to sample some brand new yogurt flavors — how exciting! First up: Mango Honey!
This flavor has just hit stores as a seasonal item and is DELICIOUS! Must find.
We also tried their new “B-Healthy” and “B-Well” yogurts, which will be in stores later this year.
They were both really good — I can’t wait until they’re available! I especially loved the B-Well “Berry Harvest” — I love me some berries.
I also finally got the chance to try the new Caramel Oikos (Stonyfield Greek yogurt)!
Yum! It was very decadent — this would be great as a healthy dessert 🙂 Or maybe even in baked goods! Must experiment…
We may or may not have also tried the baby yogurt, heh.
They are blended with all sorts of healthy things and in fun combinations, too. We tried the “pear & green beans,” “apple & sweet potato,” and “peach & squash.” Very tasty!
I think my favorite was actually the pear and green beans — sounds weird but it was good!
To accompany our yogurt tasting, we had an amazing egg, black bean, tomato, and spinach casserole:
Some fruit:
And super yummy scones, which I wasn’t able to eat more than a few bites of — so full!
After breakfast and the yogurt explosion, we got suited up to tour the Stonyfield yogurt plant! It was like getting dressed for one of my chem or bio labs, but with the addition of really sexy hairnets, helmets, and shoe covers. 😉
Heh. I should probably dress like that more often 😉
The plant tour was really cool! It was neat seeing the assembly lines with the products whizzing by.
Milk comes to Stonyfield from the farms in big trucks. From there, it takes about 48 hours to process, pasteurize, and turn it into yogurt!
We learned that once the yogurt is packaged, it has to get “incubated” in a really warm room for a couple hours to activate the live bacteria cultures. Cool! The holes in the packaging allow for proper air flow.
Once it’s properly incubated, it’s transferred to a refrigerated area and kept cold during the rest of the process.
SO much yogurt!!
Stonyfield said they are working to make their plant fully renewable, meaning they would be a zero waste facility — lots of recycling and reusing! Sweet! They currently have 5,000 square feet of solar power paneling on their roof, which powers about 50kw worth of their energy. Apparently this is actually not a lot compared to how much they use, but they are working on it! It’s very inspiring to see a company so committed to the environment. And no, no one paid me to say that 🙂 I was just really impressed this whole weekend by Stonyfield and their staff. They were so passionate and knowledgeable!
This will be a very exciting week on the blog — stay tuned for posts featuring:
- The amazing local, organic food we ate (including some recipes!)
- The answers to your questions about organic food
- Each of the farms we visited (including videos of the farmers!)
Now it’s time to get seriously caught up on homework — I miss New England already!
