Homemade Smoothies and Soups!

As any of my friends or family will tell you cooking is not one of my best features. In fact they would probably go as far as to say I can't cook. I would disagree. I am a TERRIBLE cook!! Don't ask me to cook your dinner if you want to enjoy it and actually be able to eat it. I can mess up even the most simplest of meals and I have zero patience in the kitchen. However I am not bad at cutting up certain vegetables like carrots or parsnips, and I make a gorgeous Bovril on toast. I am also very good at laying a table. At Christmas my main contribution to the meal is laying the table, complete with candles, table decoration, crackers and napkins. Sometimes I also contribute by washing up or at least drying up. So me and cooking have never been a good mix.

The problem (and my excuse) is that as someone with SED food held absolutely no interest for me. If I didn't have to eat because of hunger pains I would not have eaten at all. So the idea of spending ages slaving over a hot stove to make a meal held no appeal. I couldn't see the point. I was not interested in eating the finished thing, so why would I want to cook it? As a result my cooking skills are very limited. "Put on baking tray and put in oven until you are certain its cooked or until its burnt and goes in the bin, while you have a sandwich instead", was about the style of my culinary exploits. Even after seeing Felix and my relationship with food began to improve, I never expected my cooking skills to improve nor my interest in it. I fully expected to have to force myself to learn how to prepare and cook the new food I was eating.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself wanting to make my own smoothies and soups! I knew that shop bought smoothies were not really that good for you as they were frequently targeted in the press for being full of sugars and other hidden nasties. So I didn't want to try them as it felt like making my weight issues worse instead of better. So I became obsessed about making my own smoothies. I had already spent 2 months lusting after a juicer after seeing a demonstration of one on television and being shown how you can get more nutrients into your body through juicing, and as I am still struggling with certain vegetables and fruit I thought this would be great for me. However juicers are extremely expensive and way out of my price range. Then in the January sales my Dad managed to get hold of one for £20. Result! Except it wasn't a juicer.... it was a smoothie maker!

After a bit of research I discovered the smoothie maker was probably better for me as juicers apparently remove the fibre from the juice, whereas the smoothie maker leaves it in. So I began to start researching smoothie recipes and began experimenting! Our only successful attempt so far has been the Banana and Apple Smoothie which contains 1 dessert apple, 1 banana, half a cup of orange juice, a cup of ice, and half a cup of whole milk blended together until smooth. It was very nice, and as my Dad said it would make a lovely drink for the summer. Its also very filling! We do have other ingredients waiting to be tried including root ginger (very good for your stomach and digestion and is a natural antibiotic) a bag of mixed frozen berries and some grapes (although we ate the Grapes instead!). Unfortunately life again got in the way and due to a few weeks of tough finances we didn't buy the ingredients for the smoothies to cut back on costs. For example you need whole milk for the smoothie but we have semi-skimmed milk for normal use, so its an extra not an essential. Buying dessert apples instead of normal apples, buying extra fruit to use etc, its just not been cost effective. However as soon as we can we will buy the extras again and continue experimenting with the smoothies.

Once we started with the smoothies I discovered I could also make soups in the smoothie maker too, as long as I didn't put in hot stuff. I could blend all the content up before hand and then cook it in the saucepan. I was so excited! I was really getting into this cooking lark! So we decided to try a root vegetable soup (potato, carrots, parsnip, swede and onion) and to give it a bit of taste we used a chicken stock instead of vegetable. It went well (we had to buy a set of scales to measure out the veg quantities!) but we ended up with a huge pot full! We cooked it and ate it. It was quite thick which was nice and ok but needed something else in it to give it a bit more flavour. Since seeing Felix I am no longer than keen on bland food, so the soup lacked the kick for me! I am now trying to work out what else I can add to give it more oomph and also looking for other recipes to try.

This is very similar to what our soup looked liked. Didn't have it with brown bread though!

Suddenly we are buying smoothie makers, weighting scales, a mini grater for grating root ginger, buying root ginger (!), and looking at what other equipment we need in the kitchen!! I suddenly know stuff like the fact root ginger is good for digestion etc, or the vitamins in certain veg and fruit. I am also now obsessed about making our own stuff to avoid putting in all that artificial rubbish into our bodies!!! What is happening to me! I won't buy a Chinese ready meal because I want to make sure the veg is fresh, the rice is decent and the meat is cooked well with no artificial sweeteners or additives! I also now read the ingredients of tins, packets etc! I use to do this to check there was nothing in it I didn't like, now its to make sure what's in it is good for me!!

So I have also tried smoothies and homemade soups and will continue to add them to my new diet/lifestyle. I am also apparently turning into a bit of cook! Still can't believe this is me! I even suggestion to Dad we could make our own crumbles (not for me, but for him. Sweet stuff still holds little appeal for me and I don't want to encourage unhealthy stuff in my diet!). Dad reckons next step will be writing my own cookbook! Oh dear!