Hi there foodies!
Decided to do a little post (as well as take a break from my books) after my friend asked me how I have so many things at home when I showed her my rainbow banana ice cream. Well... my answer is right below!
Fruits for Smoothies & Banana Ice Cream:
Usually after each grocery trip, I will pack my fruits into smaller portions. If they are not ripe, I will let them ripen before I peel, pit and cut them into cubes. Normally I will divide them into packets of about 50 to 100 grams. If you ask me what type of fruits I use? I'll say any fruits you love! My usuals are strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, dragon fruit, peaches, nectarines, kiwis, bananas, plums.
For instance, I will use roughly about 50 grams of fruits for toppings for my overnight oats. I will bring it down to the fridge from the freezer before I shower and when I'm ready to eat the frozen fruits would have been partially defrosted.
For smoothies, I will use about 75 grams of fruits as I normally will add more liquids into my smoothie. I will tell you more about liquids usage soon. For banana ice cream, I will use around 100 grams of fruits as this will be thicker and add lesser liquids.
What I will do is I will bring out my frozen fruits from the freezer as I start to prepare to make my smoothie or banana ice cream. When I'm ready to use them, it will not be as hard as a rock. Or else blending will take some time as the fruits will be all stuck together and hard to separate when blending them.
Liquids I Use:
Now to the liquids I prefer to use unsweetened organic nut milks. There are many different kinds of organic or non organic milks that are available in the market, you can use non nut milk are like quinoa, rice or oat milk, nut milks like almond or hazelnut milk, depending on what you really prefer. These few milks I've listed above are easily available at supermarkets like Cold Storage, Fairprice Finest or Extra at the Organic section. There are many more but you'll find them at speciality organic stores. I usually get mine at Fairprice or Cold Storage.
Depending on how thick or milky you like your smoothie or banana ice cream to be, you just have to adjust the amount of liquids used accordingly. The milk also helps blend the frozen fruits better, otherwise it becomes too thick or it will get stuck and it takes a bit of scraping off the sides of the blender when you do your blending.
Sometimes when available I use coconut water instead of nut milks. It gives a sweet yet refreshing taste to your smoothies. Or I mix them depending on what kind of result I am looking for. If you are adventurous, you can even use fruit juice! I've tried once with orange juice and it didn't turn out well. It was my first time though. I will try again. As it takes a few tries to come up with the right porportion.
Vegetables:
Also not to forget vegetables! Usually the leafy greens are the most common vegetables to add to smoothies. At times, I use spinach in my smoothies as well kale. Although kale is not often readily available in the supermarkets, I noticed that Cold Storage have been bringing them in more often. Happiness for my smoothie!
Juices:
I've mention juices earlier, I have a slow juicer or some may call it cold pressed juicer. I use it to juice anything from fruits to vegetables. At times I juice for a little detox or as a replacement for my breakfast. The common vegetables I juice are: celery, carrots, beets, cucumber, spinach etc. Fruits options are endless, more common ones are: oranges, grapefruit, watermelon, lemon, lime, red and green apples, pineapple etc.
There are many different combination of juices you can come up with. Mix some fruits to your juice if you've just started juicing and still not ready to drink a whole glass of purely vegetable juice as the taste of the vegetable juice might be too strong for you. If you look up the web I'm pretty sure you are able to find out what are the benefits of certain fruits and vegetables and you can start from there.
I hope this helps those who are trying and experimenting. Like I mention above, I am still in the process of experimenting too! Let me know if you use a different method or improvements so that we can share all the goodness! :)
Love,
Sylvia
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