A culinary experiment: juice and smoothie

Ok. Mandy always wants me to take pictures when I make things; and today I made some fruit drinks. One is basically a juice and the other is more like a smoothie. I just used what I had on hand so you can play with any ingredients you've got as well.

Oh and just a warning: I don't measure. That's why you'll see my cup in one of the pictures. I mixed juices into the cup until it tasted good, then used that to establish my ratio for the big bottle. I only remembered to take pictures after I'd already done half of it though, so a few steps will be missing but I'll explain them anyway.

Here is a list of the ingredients I used:


Volvic Juiced* - berry medley
Trederwen Essence* - lemon and lime flavor
Trederwen Essence* - forest fruits flavor
orange juice - you can use the pulpy kind or the smooth. I used the smooth because that's what I had.
1 large orange
elderberry jam - you could use any berry flavor here

Fairy Juice

Step One: You will need to mix the Berry Medley and Forest Fruits together in a ratio similar to what I've got marked here. This is a 1.5 litre bottle. It should be completely full even though mine isn't in this photo because I only thought to take pictures after I had already done step two. Oops. We'll call this mixture Berry Forest.

Step Two: Mix the Orange Juice, Berry Forest, and Lemon and Lime similar to mine. We'll call this result Fairy Juice.

You can stop here if you like. What you've got right now is a fruit juice that tastes a little tropical with its mix of sweet and tart flavors. It tastes even better when it's ice cold. (According to my taste testers, it's also apparently 'so good' when mixed with vodka lol). I took my juice and used it as a base for yet another experiment... a smoothie type drink. Let's call it......

Fairy Berry Smoothie

Step One: Put your Fairy Juice in a blender, again using my pictures as a guideline to the sort of ratios you'll be working with. 

Step Two: My elderberry jam was from my very first attempt at making jam. It turned out a little too watery so it basically had the consistency of a really thick syrup. To get your jam to the same consistency for the sake of ratios here, mix your jam with some boiling water (add a tiny amount of the water at a time and stir until it's mixed. this will melt the jam down. remember you want it to be like a thick syrup and not TOO watery. if it's a little too thick, that's ok.) In fact, you could probably even substitute this for those thick fruity syrups you can get for pancakes. Anyway, once you get your jam syrup stuff.. add it to the blender as well. The picture below turned out awesome because the two separated themselves into obvious rations for me as the jam sank to the bottom.

Step Three: Peel your orange and put the fruit into the blender. I don't have a picture of that. My fingers were too sticky and I was afraid to get the camera dirty.

Step Four: Blend. My blender has 4 settings - pulse, 0 (off basically), 1 and 2. I put my blender on 1 and let it blend for about 3 minutes because I got sidetracked by my cat. This was a good amount though because in the end, I had a smoothie that was thick enough to be really filling still but thin enough to drink from a straw.

Step Five: Put it in something. I stuck mine in two empty and cleaned mayo jars, then put those in the fridge. If you wanted to drink it right away, toss in a couple of handfuls of ice cubes and blend for another 2 minutes on 1 again, then pour into a glass and drink.

That's what mine looked like. You can see the layer of froth that formed at the top. The color in this photo really doesn't do the mixture justice. It actually came out more of a deep red-plum kind of color. This tasted great and was very filling. 

*If you don't have the Volvic and Trederwen Essences available to you, here's my thoughts on how you could make your own versions of them.
Volvic - 1) mix together these juices in the following ratio: 2 parts strawberry, 2 parts raspberry, 1 part black currant (or red grape could work here), 1 part blueberry. 2) mix the juice with the same amount of water to double its volume.
[example: 2 cups strawberry juice, 2 cups raspberry juice, 1 cup black currant juice, 1 cup blueberry juice, 6 cups of water]
Trederwen Lemon/Lime - 1) mix: 1 part lemon juice, 1 part lime juice, 1 part sugar (or honey to taste, the main point is to have it tasting a little more sweet than tart), 6 parts water
[example: 1 cup lemon juice, 1 cup lime juice, 1 cup sugar, 6 cups water]
Tredwerwen Forest Fruits - 1 part rasberry, 2 parts blackberry, 6 parts water
[example: half cup raspberry juice, 1 cup blackberry juice, 3 cups water]

Day 5 - March 05

So I didn't get to say anything yesterday because my network was being a brat. My cravings were really bad, but I managed to stay strong. I just keep reminding myself of what my best friend Mandy told me 'Just remember, it goes away after a few minutes'. So every time I got a bad craving, I would do a little work on a drawing. By the end of the night, I'd sketched out an entire scene and I plan on working on painting it during the bad cravings too so that in the end, I'll have stayed strong and made art too.

I've still got my cold and the detoxing has added to my coughing, but I think I'll live. I'm just glad I can take as much of my elderberry cough medicine as I want without getting sick from it or anything.

What I ate yesterday:


meal 1: salad with 2 chopped up boiled eggs, 8 cherry tomatos, a tiny bit of grated white cheddar, and about a tablespoon of vinagerette dressing.
snack: about 10 red grapes
meal 2: 40g of granola with 100ml of semi-skinned milk
snack: packet of slim fast snack pretzels
meal 3: a bowl of apple and cinammon oatmeal and an orange

16oz ice water with some strawberry juice added for taste throughout the day

--------------------

Today the cravings haven't been as frequent. I'm still coughing and I've been drained and a little out of it all day today, but that's partly my cold and partly the detox I think. I've noticed that I've had a harder time falling asleep since I quit smoking. I'm not sure if it's part of the detox or just my insomnia playing up. Once I do fall asleep, I don't sleep for very long and wake up feeling drained still. I think I'll have to start making myself some valeria tea at night.

Today I've eaten:

meal 1: chicken and bacon pasta
snack: whole meal bread roll with a little butter
meal 2: tuna mayo on whole meal bread sandwich
snack: slim fast pretzels (i just REALLY like the taste of them lol)
meal 3: pizza made of white cheddar cheese, tomato sauce, and a tortilla wrap base.

8 oz orange juice
8 oz water flavored with lemon juice
500ml dr pepper (my little treat for staying strong)

Day 3 - Hell

Today has been pure hell. My cravings are through the roof and it's taken every last ounce of my willpower not to smoke. My husband said he was impressed by my self control, but I didn't feel like I had much self control considering I was pretty much staring at his packet of cigarettes and drooling when he said it. Still, I was good and didn't ask for one, so I guess I had more self control than I thought.

I've definitely found that a good trick is drinking ice cold drinks when the cravings hit really strong. Room temperature drinks don't help; but having them ice cold seems to help. So far today, I've had an entire litre of ice water. My bladder thinks I drained Niagra Falls, but ah well.

Apparently I should keep track of what I eat, so here goes..

I've had a chicken breast with some lettuce and cheese and a whole meal roll. For my snacks I've had some nice cold red grapes(about a cup) and a few pieces of celery with a salsa dip and six prawns. I've only had one meal and three snacks, but I'm ill so my appetite is a bit all over the place. Yesterday I was starving, today I'm having to force myself to eat between coughing fits.

I just finished making myself some nice elderberry cough medicine though, so hopefully the cough will go away soon. It usually does when I have my elderberry. If only I could stop the cats from trying to lick it all up..

Breaking The Habit Begins

So, my body and I aren't on speaking terms. I haven't been taking very good care of it and it's been getting its revenge on me in the form of headaches, aches and pains, and various illnesses. I'm overweight, have fibromyalgia, chronic allergies, IBS, POS, carpal tunnel, arthritis, asthma, insomnia, bipolar, and who-knows-what-else. I eat a lot of fried food cus I'm lazy and I started smoking cigarettes to deal with stress. I'm pale cus I don't go outside much and I've got dark circles around my eyes and teeth that are rotting away because of medication I was on combined with the cigarettes. I look like the walking dead, no zombie virus needed. 

I hate the state of myself. I wasn't always like this. I've been pretty sickly since I was 15, but I took more pride in my appearance. I've never been perfect and I've never considered myself attractive, but I could at least look at myself in the mirror without wanting to cry. I could blame it on the psychotic first husband I had that was abusive and didn't let me go out or make friends, or the man-whore boyfriend I had for two years after that, or even my current husband who had an affair on me and two months later began to harass me about adding a third person to our marriage because that's what he'd always wanted (and of course it had to be a girl..someone for HIM to play with). The truth is though, I stopped giving a damn about myself some time during those three relationships. 

It's been growing inside me though.. the feeling of malcontent. I'm resenting a lot of things in my life and I've finally decided that I'm going to make a change. I've never been brave enough to turn my life completely upside down, but I'm going to start fixing the things that make me the most miserable. I'm starting with my health. 

Enough is enough. 

Friday, the second of March 2013, I quit smoking. I knew that I would get snacky during the detox process, so I've cheated and bought myself only healthy foods.. and none of it can be fried. I'm not putting myself on a diet, I'm not counting calories.. I've tried that dozens of times before and I'm just not built that way. What I'm doing is simply retraining myself. When I feel snacky, I've got no choice but to snack on something healthy. When I want a meal, it'll be something a lot healthier than what I've been eating. I've got fruit like strawberries and oranges and they satisfy my sweet tooth instead of going for chocolate cake or cookies. Friday went surprisingly well. I didn't have a cigarette and I didn't even cheat and have a drag off my husband's. When the feeling hit in the back of my throat that made me feel like I was longing for a cigarette the way a vampire would thirst for blood, I just drank fruit juice or ice cold water and it went away. 

Today I woke up coughing my head off. It's partly because of the detox process, but partly because I had a bad cold forming before I even decided to quit. I've had my ice cold drinks though and have been sucking on Halls cough drops off and on all day. The cravings have been stronger today than they were yesterday, but I've been a good girl and still not had a cigarette. Keeping in mind the fact that I have other family members smoking around me all the time, I'm pretty proud of myself. I decided to write this blog in the hope that by reading it, I can keep myself strong in my resolution.. and in writing it, I can fight the cravings with action and keep a record of my struggle. 

I've started this blog weighing 16 stone 7lb. At the end of two weeks, I'll weigh myself and see if I lost any weight with my healthier eating and drinking.