Yogurt Drinks – My Favorite

I think I have always loved yogurt: I remember eating yogurt with sprinkles as a kid, and I even wrote an article on Ketchikan Underground about yogurt when I was in high school. I still love yogurt, and I have to say I love pretty much every kind there is: cheap, expensive, plain, crazy-flavored, over-sugared, unsugared, foreign and domestic. Yogurt drinks, on the other hand, are something I've discovered only within the last few years. Let me tell you, though—yogurt drinks are amazing.

Sometime a few years ago, I had a lassi for the first time and thought it was awesome. I still wish I could find a regular place to get them, but sometimes now I make them myself, testing different ratios of yogurt, milk, and flavoring ingredients. (Last time I did it I put in blackberries—delicious!)

Place Kléber, where I often drank Yop

I was then introduced to mass-produced yogurt drinks the first time I went to France. France (and Europe in general) seems to eat a whole lot of yogurt, and I happened to pick out a yogurt drink called Yop while I was in Èze—a town in southern France I would later return to. I discovered that Yop is totally delicious, but unfortunately we left France soon, and I would have to wait a few years before having it again.

When I returned to France to study abroad in Strasbourg, I loved drinking Yop. I even mentioned it in blogposts here and here. I drank it at home, drank it on trips, and of course drank it while wandering about the streets of Strasbourg, especially Place Kléber, one of the main squares of the city and the place where Monoprix was located—the store with the best Yop price. I can't say there was any flavor of Yop I didn't like when I tried it, but my favorite had to be vanilla, a plain and tangy taste you could have with any food.

Since I've been back in D.C., I've taken to drinking kefir, especially the pomegranate flavor of the brand at Trader Joe's. Kefir is certainly different than Yop or a lassi, and it can be strongly carbonated, depending on the type. The carbonation was certainly a shock to me, the first time I tried the drink, but I really like the TJ's drink in particular because it's less carbonated and has an absolutely delicious pomegranate taste. I don't buy it all the time, of course, (since it's about the price of a Starbucks drink), but when I do it's really quite a treat.

It's hard to describe why yogurt drinks are so delicious—the creaminess, the sweetness, the tanginess, and the (optional) fruitiness. However you analyze it, though, I know yogurt drinks are my favorite type of drink out there, and I hope I will continue to find them—in whatever form I can—wherever I go in life.