Tag: Blueberries

blueberry smoothie

Glorious Orange Berry Blitz-ish Smoothie (Mango, Pineapple, Blueberry) – Vegan, Paleo

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When I was a youngin,’ I once went to a summer camp. The camp was located on a college campus and close by was a Jamba Juice. So most days (during the few weeks we were there), I and some of the other students would go to Jamba Juice for smoothies and a scone for breakfast.

My favorite smoothie was the (now discontinued) Orange Berry Blitz. I loved how the orange juice gave the blueberries and pineapple smoothie a wonderful brightness.

It’s funny how food and flavors can sometimes take you back, and suddenly, there you are again, cocooned in a marvelous memory.

I smile now just thinking of how happy I was that summer, and and this berry smoothie is still the perfect thing to drink on a nice summer day.

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This is my version of that glorious smoothie. I added mango because I think that it gives the smoothie a little more of a tropical flavor (and an extra little bit of sweetness as well).

Feel free to play around with the ingredients. Sometimes I replace the apple juice with water, or add in a few handfuls of baby spinach (if I want to get my greens in for the day without having to give it too much thought).

Make the smoothie that you want to drink (though I will say that this smoothie is pretty awesome as written) and have fun!

Glorious Orange Berry Blitz-ish Smoothie

Makes 1 generous serving

Ingredients

3/4 cup ripe mango (cut into roughly 1 inch cubes, about 1 mango)

3/4 cup fresh pineapple chunks (cut into about 1.5 inch wedges, canned pineapple works too)

1 1/4 cup frozen blueberries

1/2 cup apple juice (I used the Martinelli’s brand)

2-3 tbsp orange juice

 

Instructions

1. Add all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Serve immediately.

 

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This is what the plate of fruit looked like after I added the fruit into the blender. I think that it’s quite beautiful in a wabi-sabi kind of way.

I hope that you have many happy summer days drinking smoothies with your loved ones.

Enjoy!

Joyful Fruit Salad – Vegan, Paleo

fruit salad

There’s a really funny writer/actor/comedienne extraordinaire named Tiffany Haddish who has a dish called “Joyful Greens.” She says that they are “Joyful Greens” because she smiles when she picks the collard greens from her garden, she smiles when she washes them, and she smiles when she cooks them. All that joy, love and care that she puts into growing and preparing the greens make them extra delicious.

Taylor Swift also loves Tiffany’s Joyful Greens. Tiffany brought them with her to one of Taylor’s dinner parties and where they also dined on homemade barbecue chicken, potato salad, and cornbread (don’t we all wish that we could have been at that dinner party? It’s sounds amazing.)

Here’s a video of Tiffany teaching Oprah and Ellen how to make them.

 

 

While I didn’t grow these fruits myself, this is my joyful fruit salad. It’s joyful because you smile while you’re picking out the fruit (you smile at how wonderful and sweet that ripe mango smells), you smile when you see how bright and happy the different colors of the fruits are together, and you smile when you eat it (because it tastes so good…)

It’s super quick to put together, and I like packing it in a lunch because the colors look so cheerful together that I always look forward to eating it. This combination of fruits taste lovely together, and eating it feels like a real treat.

 

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Joyful Fruit Salad

Makes 1 generous serving

Ingredients

1 ripe mango*

1 ripe kiwi**

1/3 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)

 

Notes – *Ripe mangoes smell very sweet and fragrant. Mangoes that aren’t ripe won’t smell much like anything.

** Ripe kiwis are soft, but not squishy. If you have one that’s really firm, go ahead and leave alone for a couple days and it will ripen up.

 

Instructions

1. Cut the mango into 3/4 inch cubes (or cut it up however you like, this is just how I do it).

There are many ways to cut up a mango. I slice the cheeks off either side of the seed, then try and carefully slice off any remaining mango flesh that I can off of the seed. Then I cut the mango cheeks into 3/4 inch strips and use a paring knife to carefully separate the peel from the mango flesh (kind of like how you would peel an apple with a paring knife). I then cut the peel away from the slices of mango that I cut away from the seed into rough chunks and add them to a bowl with the rest of the cubed mango.

I’ve also seen people use a potato peeler to peel the mango and then slice the mango cheeks off either side of the seed, but I don’t do it that way because I find that the mango gets really slippery to hold while you’re trying to make your initial cuts.

All this is to say, cut up your mango in a way that works for you. The fruit salad will still be awesome.

2. Peel your kiwi and slice it into 1/4 inch slices.

How I peel a kiwi – Cut 1/4 inch off the top and bottom of your kiwi. Sit it flat on your cutting board and make 1/2 inch slices down the sides of the kiwi, cutting as close to the peel as you can until you’ve cut off all the kiwi peel.

You can also cut 1/4 inch off the top and bottom of a kiwi and slide spoon between the kiwi peel and the green flesh. Rotate your spoon under the peel until the peel has completely separated from the fruit.

3. Add your kiwi to the bowl of cubed mango along with the blueberries.

Enjoy!

 

fruit salad empty

What the bowl looks like once I packed the rest of it into a mason jar for tomorrow’s lunch. This is what was leftover, which looks very pretty on it’s own.

No worries, this didn’t go to waste. I ate it right after I took the picture, and I felt very happy and grateful.

blueberry muffins

The Best Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins Recipe – Made with Oat Flour – Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free

I love blueberries, and I also love blueberry muffins. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t love them.

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Lots of us have fond memories of baking them with our families, and there is just something incredibly comforting and nostalgic about them.

A good blueberry muffin is one of the things that I most wanted to eat when I went gluten free, and I’m so glad that I finally came up with a recipe for them!

These delicious blueberry muffins are made with oat flour, and taste just like the muffins that you remember eating when you were a kid.

They are such a treat, and there’s nothing like biting into a freshly baked blueberry muffin on a cold morning with a hot cup of tea.

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Heaven.

These blueberry muffins taste amazing, and are so good that you won’t believe that they are gluten free, refined sugar free, and dairy free.

They have a really great texture, just like a normal muffin, and aren’t gummy or funny textured at all.

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They use coconut oil instead of butter, but they don’t taste like coconut at all. They are perfectly sweet, and the bright flavor of the blueberries really shines through each delicious bite.

You won’t miss gluten / dairy muffins after you eat one of these, promise.

I hope that you give them a try!

 

The Best Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins

Makes 8 muffins

 

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup of oat flour (135g) *

½ level tsp of baking soda

1 ½ tbsp ground flax seed (6g)

tiny pinch of salt

 

¼ cup water

1/8 level tsp of psyllium husk powder**

 

1/3 cup + 1 tbsp maple syrup

2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup melted coconut oil***

1 egg

 

1 cup of blueberries – I used frozen, but fresh will work too.

 

* For the best results, measure out the oat flour and ground flax seed by weight on a digital scale.

I grind rolled oats in a blender until I have a pretty fine flour. Don’t use a food processor for this as the flour won’t be fine enough. If I have any extra flour, I just put in into an airtight container to use for another recipe. I grind the flax seeds using the same method.

** If you don’t have the psyllium husk powder, you can just omit it. Just add the water in with the rest of the liquid ingredients. The muffins will still turn out well, just slightly more crumbly.

*** The coconut oil makes the muffins more solid at temperatures below 76 degrees, but you can heat them up in a toaster oven at a low temperature and they will become soft again. If you want the muffins to be soft all the time, you can probably substitute a neutral flavored oil that’s liquid at room temperature for the coconut oil.

 

Instructions

1. Grease and flour 8 of the wells in your muffin pan with some coconut oil and oat flour, or you can skip this step and just pop 8 muffin liners into the muffin pan.

2. Mix together the water and psyllium husk powder in a small bowl, and set aside the bowl aside for 5 minutes to allow the psyllium husk to gel.

3. In a large bowl sift together the oat flour, baking soda, salt, and ground flax seed.

4. In a separate medium sized bowl beat the egg, and add in the maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, and the psyllium husk mixture and stir until well combined.

5. Add the melted coconut oil to the flour mixture and give it a good stir. Add in rest of the liquid ingredients to the muffin batter and stir until well combined.

6. Set a timer for 15 minutes and let your muffin mixture rest.

7. Preheat your oven to 350.

8. When the timer goes off, put your blueberries into a sieve and using your snap mesh tea strainer (or you can use another sieve or even a tablespoon) to sift oat flour over your blueberries until they are well coated in the oat flour. Shake the berries in the sieve to get any excess oat flour off of them.

Coating the berries in the oat flour makes it so that the berries don’t sink to the bottom of the muffins while as they bake.

9. Fold the blueberries through your batter (try not to stir the mixture too much, as too much mixing will cause the frozen blueberries to turn the muffin batter purple), and divide the batter equally amongst the 8 muffin wells.

One note about this, because we’re using coconut oil and the berries are frozen, the batter will seize up on you because coconut oil turns solid under 76 degrees F (24 C). If the berries are fresh you shouldn’t have this problem, but it’s fine.

Just do the best you can to divide the batter up as equally as possible, and don’t worry if the mixture looks lumpy when you put the muffins into the oven. The muffins will smooth out in the oven and will bake up beautifully.

9. Pop the muffins into the oven, and bake for 25 minutes, turning the muffins 180 degrees after they’ve been in the oven for 13 minutes. You don’t have to do this, but it helps the muffins to bake more evenly.

Some of the muffins will look like they are baking more quickly than others. Don’t worry about this as they will all bake up evenly at the end.

11. After the 25 minutes, turn the oven temperature up to 375, and turn the muffin pan by 90 degrees. Allow the muffins to bake for another 10 minutes until they are golden brown.

If you test the muffins with a toothpick, it should come out pretty clean with just a few crumbs here and there.

Allow the muffins to cool in the pan for 30 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of each muffin and pop them out onto a plate and serve.

 

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Happy Eating!