Tropical Juice Smoothie

This week I have declared Smoothie week! As I wrote in my previous post Smoothies have now become a staple in my house, I have at least one a day! I enjoy both yoghurt, milk based smoothies and the fruit juice smoothie! After my delicious Mango, Banana, Passion fruit Yoghurt and Pistachio Smoothie, I had for lunch, in the afternoon I was getting a bit hungry.

As I had declared as a New Years Resolution to loose weight, I decided on a fruit juice Smoothie. Again this juice smoothie oozed of Australian Summer Fruits and nuts just topped off the perfect refreshing Smoothie. It felt like I was in Far North Queensland, sipping a delicious, refreshing smoothie. My husband arrived home from work as I was making the smoothie and was insisting that I remove the skin from the nectarines! He couldn't understand that you could eat fruit with the skin on! That's probably because the only fruit he will eat is Mangoes and the occasional apple, or strawberries and bananas in a smoothie. He thought my Tropical Juice Smoothie looked disgusting!

Without Further ado here is the recipe, don't be afraid to add different fruits.

Tropical Juice Smoothie

Ingredients:
1/4 of rockmelon(USA readers I'm certain you call it Cantaloupe)
2 red flesh nectarine
Juice of 2 oranges
1 banana
Small handful of crushed nuts
 A handful of ice cubes
I added a little bit of tropical juice (you can also add water)

Method: Cut rockmelon, cut nectarines (leaving skin on), squeeze the juice of 2 oranges, break the banana into smaller pieces, add the nuts and ice cubes and additional juice or water if needed. Enjoy this tropical delight xx

Don't forget you can follow me on Twitter @MMOAGFL, you can also like my Facebook page, Mishaps and Mayhem of A Gluten Free Life. Finally #SABH is having another blog hop beginning on 16th January, the theme is Death By Chocolate, and it is being conducted by the lovely lady behind The Hungry Australian blog.

A Summer Story and a Mango, Banana, Pistachio and Passionfruit Yoghurt Smoothie

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

Adults Only Chocolate Cherry Mousse, A New Years Eve Story

My new years this year was very quite, due mainly to my husband being sick and me in a fair amount of pain. So our new years was celebrated with our parents (dad was also sick!). I decided that just because it was small didn't mean we didn't get to celebrate in style! I got out my Christmas day dress and mum dressed up a bit, though my husband and dad, didn't have the energy or couldn't see the sense in it! We had cheese and biscuits and pear paste, nuts and I made mum and I the lovely cocktail I made for the Nuffnang competition, White Nectarine and Butterscotch Schnapps. It tastes divine and it would have been so easy to keep on making them and drinking them! But we stayed with the one, I wanted to last until midnight!

So mum made some delicious salads,with gf Greek sausages n onion! I was in charge of dessert,I decided on an old favourite my easy chocolate mousse but this time I added a few things to it!

I thought of the flavour combination that we all like and was in the fridge and in the alcohol storage and decided upon a combination of finely chopped fresh cherries, marinated in a cherry liqueur (that I had left over from the GF Cherry Ripe Cakes). I'll give you the recipe shortly, it went down a treat, a nice change from the normal mousse and it actually made it lighter and not so heavy after a lovely feast for dinner (and the pre- dinner nibbles), it was new years eve, so resolutions didn't have to start yet!

After our dessert, we sat down with my parents to watch Hangover 2, which was much better than I expected, but both my husband and I didn't know what to do when the C bomb was dropped a few times with mum in the room! I have to say it was nice to have a small and relaxing new years eve, and to have it just with our parents. It's something that we will look back on for a long time and appreciate it, this maturity talk must have something to do with turning 30!.

We all managed to make the midnight fireworks, with our beloved dog inside, on the map, so the big bad fireworks wouldn't spook our 40kg German Shepard!

If you get the change, make the time to have a small family new years eve, it really is something special and less of a hangover in the morning (maybe if I had of been feeling better there may have been some more cocktails!)


Adults Only Cherry Chocolate Mousse

 Ingredients:

300ml (small) carton of thickened cream
1 block of milk chocolate (don't buy the expensive brands, they don't melt well, I buy Woolworth's brand chocolate and it works every time!)
1 cup of finely chopped cherries (cut around each side of the stem, then cut the remaining bits at the bottom)
Cover the cherries in the cherry liqueur, with 1-2cm above the cherries, place in bowl, cover with foil and marinate for at least 2-3 hours

Method:

Whip the cream with an electric (hand held) until cream forms peaks and becomes thicker. Break the chocolate up into small pieces and place in a microwave proof bowl, heat on high for 30 seconds, and stir with a wooden spoon, repeat this process until chocolate is melted. Fold in chocolate to cream. Add the cherries (not all the liqueur, the cream will curdle), get a spoon and spoon cherries into moussese, mix well. Place in small glasses and add a cherry, cut in the middle on the edge of the glass for presentation and enjoy!

Happy New Year to all.

Let me know how this yummy and easy dessert goes for you!