Summer time to both myself and my husband, means the blender is out everyday at least once daily, blending up a delicious smoothie, using the lovely Australian fresh summer fruit. I have already started on the smoothie summer campaign and it has become my main lunch, which is quite filling and relatively healthy (depending on what you add to it!)
I'm also in the process of reviewing a great book Good & Easy Eats by Kim Wilson from Simply Natural Health. I've been playing with the recipes in her book and have been making smoothies not just using frozen yoghurt, yoghurt, or ice cream, but using juices and adding nuts to delightful smoothies. I have to admit that adding nuts is something I wouldn't of thought of before, but it adds a lovely flavour and the juice smoothies are so refreshing and not as heavy as the yoghurt based smoothie. I've added pistachio nuts and crushed nuts to both juice and yoghurt based smoothies and they make for a lovely twist, the pistachio nuts, personally work best with the summer fruits and not too many. It's also great to get in your fruit intake for the day, in one hit in a smoothie, a great idea for kids who refuse to eat fruit, if it looks and tastes like a yummy milkshake, they will drink it up without giving it a second thought!
The smoothie that I have to add today is full of lovely fresh Australian summer fruit, with the addition of pistachio nuts, it makes for a little twist, without it being too over bearing. Kim from Simply Natural Health, has advised me its best to soak nuts over night it helps with digestion, but I always forget, as I'm not sure what I'll feel like the day or night prior. Before I give you the recipe, I encourage you to get out the blender and have a play around with flavours. Remember that with any type of cooking we always have mistakes or not the turn out you hoped for, its all part of the learning curve of cooking, particularly gf cooking and also part of life. Don't beat yourself up about the small things, start off following recipes and you will start to get an idea of flavours that work together.
Without further ado here is the recipe:
Mango, Banana, passionfruit, yoghurt,and pistachio Smoothie
Ingredients:
1 large banana
1 fresh mango
1 small tub of passionfruit low fat yoghurt
6 pistachio nuts
1-2 cups of low fat milk
Handful of ice cubes
Method:
Break the banana into smaller pieces and place in blender, cut the mango and add to blender, add the tub of yoghurt, shell the pistachio nuts, cut in half and put in blender add milk (until just covering with a few cm gap the ingredients in the blender. Add a handful of ice to the blender. Blend on a low to medium speed for 20-30 seconds, check on how thick it is and if needed blend some more. Pour into either a large old fashioned milkshake cup if for one, or two smaller glasses for two people, if you use normal size glasses it will probably stretch to four!
I hope you enjoy this smoothie as much as I have.
Don't forget I'm now on twitter you can find me @MMOAGFL and if your reading this blog as so many of you are, simply click on the follow me tab to the right of the screen, or get new posts sent to you directly. I also have a Facebook page, which is under the blog name, all you have to do is click like and that's it on Facebook! It really makes my day when I get a new follower on twitter or the blog, it shows that people are liking what they are reading and care enough to follow me.
Also for the food bloggers reading this #SABH (Sweet Adventures Blog Hop), I competed in the last 2, Pavlovas and Festive Favourites,is having another blog hop, this time it's being hosted by The Hungry Australian and the theme is Death By Chocolate, my mind is a buzz with ideas of what things I will come up with, I think there will be more than one entry for me. There is a Facebook page under Sweet Adventures Blog Hop, follow them and get some more information I hope you enjoy your smoothie and I look forward to you joining me on my blog, twitter and Facebook, you will really make my day.
On Twitter at the moment I'm doing a fact a day about coeliac disease, a great easy way to keep informed about the disease and remove the fallacies from the facts, I hope this will keep you informed, encourage you to get tested and see how easy it is to make the change and believe me you will feel so much better when you change your diet, you won't know yourself!
Until the next Smoothie!! Enjoy xxx
