My kingdom for a Wallaby yogurt!

When I first left Singapore for the US to go to college, it took me a while before I noticed that my diet had fundamentally changed. I suppose I was still a growing boy – concerned with quantity over quality, and blissfully oblivious to the impact of such a diet change to my physique and physiology. That’s right, I’m blaming Nature for putting on so much weight. But about eight or nine months into college, I noticed just what a drastic change I had wrought in the food I was putting in my mouth – and its effect on me.

There was the weight gain, obviously. But fundamentally I had gone from a place where carbohydrates were the focus of the meal (starches like rice and noodles) to one where proteins were the main focus. I ate my vegetables raw (if at all) instead of cooked, and my intake of fruits dropped drastically. It proved surprisingly difficult to get fresh fruit in Providence. I’m not sure how this affected my body, but I’m sure it must have.

I say that because I an undergoing the reverse change right now, and I am now more acutely aware of how I am adjusting to the Singaporean diet. After such an extended period of time away – most of it spent eating well – there are things that I am slowly getting used to again. There is the spice, for example. I am relearning to love eating everything topped with red or green chillies pickled in soy sauce. Cooks here also tend to season everything on a sweeter note, which was comfortingly familiar when I first returned, but now takes some wrestling with. Little things – but for some reason I am so much more aware of them now.

And there are also some things I’ve left behind that I miss. I miss a good sandwich. There are many times when I say to myself that I could really go for a nice sandwich, some honey mustard, chips and a bottle of Nantucket Nectars Big Cranberry juice. And there isn’t a lot of cheese in the Singaporean diet, so I miss that too. But one of the things that I miss the most is Wallaby organic yogurt.

Hunter first introduced me to Wallaby yogurt, and I think he succeeded where I failed subsequently because he did the soft sell on me. Later when I became a fan of the yogurt I would literally grab people by the arm and yell at them to try this yogurt. I don’t think I converted very many people that way. But I remember Hunter telling me, almost offhandedly, that Matthew had turned him on to a new brand of yogurt and it was good. That was all he said. A few days later I was at Whole Foods when I saw the yogurt he was talking about and bought a couple to try, on a whim. I didn’t look back.

According to their website, Wallaby yogurt was inspired by the creators’ visit to Australia (hence the name) and the creamy-style yogurt that is apparently available there. The difference, allegedly, is that gelatins are not added to Wallaby yogurt to thicken it, but instead it undergoes a slow cooking process to give it a smooth, creamy texture.

Back in the days when I was working from home, I would have a Wallaby yogurt most days for breakfast. One of the amazing things about yogurt is that it is a multi-task enabler. You don’t have to be in one place to eat it, and you certainly don’t have to focus to enjoy it. Come to think of it, I was almost always doing something else while eating Wallaby yogurt. I ate it while reading the paper, or my email. I ate it while leisurely strolling out to get the mail. I ate it as I paced around my living room, talking on the phone. I ate it standing up in the kitchen, sometimes with the refrigerator door still ajar. One of my favourite parts was carefully, meticulously scraping the bottom of the cup to get every last drop of the yogurt, and then licking the back of the spoon.

I liked the single flavour ones the best (peach, blueberry, lemon) but the more exotic and mixed ones weren’t too shabby either. The creamy mouthfeel is hard to beat; and they were all just sweet enough, no more and no less, unlike most commercial fruit-flavoured yogurts that are too sweet for me.

There is nothing in Singapore that comes close.