Yesterday morning I was invited for breakfast to mark the launch of Arla’s new Icelandic Skyr yogurt. The event was hosted at The Ham Yard Hotel, tucked away behind Piccadilly Circus, and is one of the hotels in the Firmdale Group. I’ve held PR events at many of their others, but this was my first visit to The Ham Yard. And it’s pretty incredible!
I confess to being a typical (gluttonous!) Brit when it comes to breakfast – I just love a good English brekkie at the weekend! On weekdays I tend to either go all out (when I’m being especially naughty, a bacon bap or a croissant) or nothing at all (which is more likely). So I was keen to hear what nutritionist Charlotte Stirling Reed and Arla would have to say.
Iceland seems to be becoming increasingly ‘en vogue’ of late – trips to Reykjavik appear to have become more popular (either that or they have some very good PR and Marketing people!) and the recent Sky Atlantic TV programme ‘Fortitude’ was filmed on location there. As you may have read in one of my previous posts, Tim and I visited in January 2012 and loved every minute of it! We were hooked on Fortitude and it really made me want to go back (more for the beautiful landscapes and fantastic food rather than the murders and parasitic wasps! If you haven’t watched it yet – do!)
I tend to eat Greek yogurt with savoury dishes, largely due to my upbringing in Cyprus, although I would often eat it with local puddings such as Baklava. Generally I don’t tend to think of eating fruit flavoured yogurts for a pudding or snack. So I was keen to find out what different flavours of Arla Skyr would be available. I love the idea of Icelandic yogurt – from our time there, it conjures up images of clean, crisp, fresh landscapes and a very pure product. These photos I took while I was there should give you an idea of what I mean. Imagine that in yogurt-form – bliss!
As Charlotte explained to us, Skyr (pronounced ’Skee-er’) has been the ‘go to’ yogurt in Iceland for thousands of years and is made from skimmed cows milk. This results in a silky texture which, most importantly, is low in fat, reduced sugar and naturally high in protein. She stressed the importance of the latter, for preventing energy crashes throughout the day. I normally resort to things like nuts for this, so it was good to think of this as an alternative (and in this scorching weather at the moment, anything cold would be appreciated!!)
The Arla Skyr yogurt is available in big pots (Simply Natural, Mixed with Strawberry and Mixed with Honey) for £1.69 and in snack size (Simply Natural, Apple and Lingonberry, Nordic Sour Cherry and Strawberry and Nordic Mixed Berry) for £0.85. These small pots only contain 114 kcal, so it’s great for anyone who’s calorie counting! The fruit yogurts obviously do contain some sugar, but I was assured that they’re a much healthier alternative to others on the market, with both the sugar and fat content being much lower.
I recently made a berry tart, which for the past few days, we’ve rather naughtily been eating with some beautiful Devonshire clotted cream. So last night I thought I’d try out the Arla Skyr yogurt instead. I tried the Simply Natural, as I didn’t want the fruit flavours to clash with the raspberry and blueberry in the tart. It was a great accompaniment – the tart has a lot of sugar in it, so having something less sweet than cream or custard worked very well. It was also a lot thicker than I was expecting, so it would be perfect to stir into curries or soups!
*Please note that Arla Skyr is definitely 100% suitable for vegetarians. I’ve had a few queries about this, but I’ve had confirmation from Arla that it’s suitable :)
I was invited to this event by Arla and Cow PR, and was given some samples to try out for review purposes, but did not receive any payment. All views are my own.