Mango Madness smoothie!

I promised a bit of a more colorful picture this time around. I was hoping it would be a bit more yellow and bright to help bring summer along, but this is what it is. Every so often I get in the mood for Indian food. Lately it has been more and more often. One special treat with Indian cuisine is a Mango Lasse - soy, mango, yogurt. I am not sure exactly what the official ingredients are but its good. I highly recommend it next time you dine Indian style. This smoothie is similar although not as sweet. It is pretty easy to make at home and thanks to the marvels of modern grocery frozen mango is the key ingredient.

Mango Madness
Ingredients:
1 C frozen mango
1/2 C plain yogurt
1/2 C milk (you can also use vanilla soy or almond milk)
1/4 C cottage cheese (optional)
1/4 C OJ

Put all ingredients in blender and frappe on high for 2 minutes. Makes enough for one smoothie.

Future post will explain the little black flecks in the smoothie.

It's so hot!! Chocolate PB Banana Smoothie

This past weekend in NY and much of New England was unseasonably warm. It felt like August. I did not want to cook or really do anything to add heat into the apartment. And again with the banana, hot humid air only makes them ripen faster. One of the ways I try to use bananas when they are just past when I would like to eat them is put them in the blender. Once they are all mushed up it really doesn't matter to me how ripe they are. Thus, my next few post will be of some smoothies I make when it is just too hot to cook.

The first is a new one that I just started making. My no fun name for it is simply what it is...Chocolate, peanut butter, and bananas.

Chocolate PB Banana Smoothie

Ingredients:

1 banana

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cottage cheese

1/2 chocolate soy milk

1 Tbsp peanut butter

2 ice cubes (if you are really hot)

Put all ingredients into blender at once and blend on high for about one minute. This might take longer if you have big ice cubes and do not want any remains of ice chunks.

Now I promise you that the cottage cheese taste is non-existent. I have a co-worker on a health kick recently who first told me about mixing cottage cheese into yogurt for added protein. Cottage cheese is a really good source of protein with very few calories. I would not call myself a huge fan of cottage cheese but I do tend to have it every once in a while to enjoy. You really will be satisfied with this drink for breakfast or dinner replacement due to that extra protein.

I apologize for the gross pictures. Chocolate, PB, and bananas are just not colorful. Fure smoothie recipes will be a bit more colorful.

Papa papaya!

Papayas!! This past week was a mad dash to get the honeymoon plans nailed down. Jordan and I had lots of hope that since we traveled so much for work that it would be very simple to plan an elaborate honeymoon itinerary in a country that spoke a language neither of us knew, at least not very well. I am happy to say we are fully booked for an amazing trip to Costa Rica. We ended up using a travel agent and thus passed off all the hard work and stress to someone else.

In the middle of this process though Jordan and I started fantasizing about the wonderful exotic eats we would encounter. I have yet to really research this question but in the weird Asian market we sometimes frequent for fruits and veggies I spotted some papaya.

We were lucky I think knowing nothing about how to pick out a good papaya with the one we got. After getting back to the apartment, Jordan researched when is a papaya ripe and we realized it must change to a yellow color as seen below. Once our papaya was said color, we scraped out the seeds and just ate it like a melon. I thought it was pretty good, but very sweet. Jordan concurred.

I can only begin to imagine what will find us in Costa Rica. My thoughts are as long as its pretty I will try it.