Upside down citrus cake. Blood oranges and kumquats.


Hello, my name is Mel and I have fructose malabsorption… Imagine reading all those wonderful strawberry recipes this time of year and and not being able to eat even one little strawberry. Same with apples, pears and cherries. Don’t feel sorry for me – leaving fruit away is better than a hurting stomach afterward.

As a coping strategy, I started looking for fruit cakes with citrus and/or banana – fruit I can definitively eat. And stumbling through flood blogs I found this upside down cake – sweet, tangy, fruity and a very good ersatz for all the fruit desserts I missed in the last year.

UPSIDE DOWN CITRUS CAKE
for a 10-inch / 26 cm pan
adapted from running with tweezers

butter and flour for the pan
1/2 cup / 115 g sugar
1/2 cup / 115 g brown sugar
5 small blood oranges, peeled and cut into wheels 1/4 inch / 5 mm thick and seeds removed
10 kumquats, cut into wheels 1/4 inch / 5 mm thick and seeds removed
1 cup / 150 g all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup / 125 ml grapefruit, orange or cranberry juice
1/2 cup / 125 ml vegetable oil, e.g. canola


Preheat your oven to 190° C / 375°F and butter and flour your cake pan. As with all upside-down cakes, I recommend to use a pan that’s made of one piece and not a springform pan. Imagine all the juice and caramel dripping into your oven… Cleaning up that mess is no fun.


Take a small bowl and mix the brown and the white sugar together. Then sprinkle half of this mixture onto the bottom of your pie pan.


Peel the oranges and cut them into 5 mm thick slices. And leave the kumquats unpeeled (of course!) and also cut into 5 mm thick slices. And remove all the seeds, they tend to taste terribly bitter when you accidentally bite on one.


Arrange all the citrus slices on top of the sugar – if possible in one layer. You could also arrange them in intricate ornamental patterns, but I was lazy that day so I let chaos reign.

Luckily, that was the hardest part. The dough is made with the really easy muffin method.


Take a medium bowl and mix in there all the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. And no need to sift the flour, just stir a couple of times with a wire whisk.


Now get another bowl (I like to use a measuring jug) and mix in there the liquid ingredients: egg, vanilla extract, juice and oil.

The original recipe says to use orange or grapefruit juice, but I only had cranberry juice – and it tasted great.


Very quickly mix the liquid with the flour mixture – just 15 strokes, no matter if there are some flour blobs left – and carefully fill the dough on top of the citrus slices. Bake at 190° C /375°F for 45 min and then let it cool. Completely. Don’t be impatient or your beautiful orange layer will stick to the pan and destroy your cake.

Take this cake to work and be amazed how quickly it vanishes. Be sure to save a piece for yourself…

Elivs’ Meat Loaf. Pure Rock’n’Roll.


Meat loaf is a classic dish in German and American culture and there are tons of variations: my grandma used to put in a hard-cooked egg, my mom puts in tons of herbs and spices and my friend Nadine makes kind of a Greek version with rosemary and feta. But somehow I have settled on the version mentioned in my mother-in-law’s Elvis cookbook: glazed with ketchup and with bacon on it. It somehow tastes like home and it tastes even better with a cold beer and some loud rock’n’roll.

ELVIS’ MEAT LOAF

1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup / 125 ml cream
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, finely diced
2 garlic gloves, crushed
2 celery sticks, finely diced
1 kg / 2 pounds ground beef
500 g / 1 pound ground pork
2 eggs
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried sage
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
1/2 tablespoon soy sauce | tamari
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 hard boiled egg (optional)
vegetable oil
1/2 cup ketchup
4-6 bacon strips
1 kg / 2 pounds potatoes, peeled and halved


Soak the oats in the cream and let them sit for 15 minutes. And preheat your oven to 180°C / 350°F.


Meanwhile, chop up the parsley, onions, garlic and celery and cook everything except the parsley in the butter on low heat until they everything starting to get soft. Then set aside to let it cool.


Get a large bowl (the Kitchen Aid bowl is just perfect) and fill in the meat, eggs, all the spices and sauces (except the ketchup), the soaked oats and the softened onions.


This is the hot sauce I used – it’s really crazy hot, that’s why I reduced the amount to a 1/4 teaspoon.

By the way, I like to keep my measuring spoons separated – I only have one set and I don’t see why I should put everything into the dishwasher when I used just one spoon. So each one got it’s own keyring and they hang right next to my stove.


Mix the meat with the other ingredients either by hand – or if you have RSI like me from using the computer all day – use the paddle attachment on your Kitchen Aid on the lowest setting. Let it mix for a minute or so, it should just be combined.


Take a big casserole dish (mine is a Pyrex lasagna dish) and and lightly cover the bottom with oil. Then form a loaf out of the meat mixture and place it in your casserole dish. And if you were my grandma, you would place a peeled, hard-cooked egg inside the meat loaf. She called it “Falscher Hase”, meaning something like bogus bunny – traditionally served for Easter.

See the crack on the side? Make sure to seal all the cracks or all the beautiful meat juices will run out and leave you with a dry meat loaf. Nobody really likes that.


Next, cover all the surface of the meat loaf with ketchup. This will result in a nice, caramelized crust. And remember, everything caramelized is good by definition.


Lay on some strips of bacon and arrange the peeled potatoes around the meat. Put it into the oven for about 1 – 1 1/2 hours – until the crust is golden brown and (if you happen to have a thermometer) the internal temperature is over 65°C / 150°F.


Get it out of the oven and let it sit covered for 15 minutes – like any roast, all the good juices would run out if you cut right away. Cut into slices and serve with roast potatoes and ketchup. And sneak some of the brown stuff from the bottom of the pan on your plate.

And the next day, make sandwiches: toasted ciabatta bread, some homemade mayo, more ketchup, a slice of meat loaf and some lettuce.

Canelés. Like straight from Bordeaux.


Canelés are to Bordeaux what macarons are to Paris. You will find them in every café and in some very expensive confiseries in the town center – selling not much else. Except those original copper molds for ridiculous prices. I tried one canelé in a café after a shopping tour. As I was in desperate need of caffeine to survive the 2-hour drive back, I ordered a double espresso and one of those rather boring looking canelés. But I was in for a surprise: the crust was actually so caramelized that it cracked and crunched when I took a bite. And the center was soft, almost pudding-like and tasted deliciously of eggs and rum.

It was totally clear to me that I had to make those at home and I was more than happy when I found a silicon mold for making 10 canelés in the supermarket – for the price of a copper mold for making 1 canelé. Don’t be afraid, it’s not a unitasker: you can also make very cute muffins and cupcakes with it.

Be aware that the batter needs to rest for at least 24 hours before baking – apart form that, they’re ridiculously easy to make. And if you don’t have a canelé mold, just go ahead and use your muffin tin or simple espresso cups. They won’t look original, but you’re going for the taste, right?

CANELÉS
makes 10, adapted from Chocolate&Zucchini

50 g / 3/8 cup / 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
90 g / 1/2 cup sugar
250 ml / 1 cup milk
15 g / 1 tablespoon butter
1/2 vanilla pod
2 small eggs (or 1 large egg plus 1 yolk)
40 ml / 3 tablespoons good-quality rum (eg Negrita)


Grab a mixing bowl – or even better, a bowl with a beak for pouring – and mix flour and sugar in there.
In a small pot, heat up milk, butter and vanilla and let it simmer for a minute, then remove the vanilla pod.

Crack open the eggs and pour them on the flour mixture, start whisking with a fork or a wire whisk, while slowly pouring in the hot milk. That should only take a minute and there should be no lumps left. It will look, feel and taste like a thin pancake batter.

Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla pod and mix them into the dough – and also mix in the rum. Then put it in the fridge for at least 24 hours. Right, you’ll have to wait a whole day! If you skip this, you would be making popovers, not canelés.

Oh, and don’t throw the empty vanilla pod away – there’s still a lot of flavor inside! Just wash away the milk, let it dry and put it into a little jar with sugar and a tight lid. Let that sit for a couple of weeks and you’ll have vanilla sugar.


The next day, preheat your oven to 250°C / 480°F and butter the molds very thoroughly – it doesn’t matter if it’s a real canelé mold or a simple muffin tin. It’s the taste that matters.

Pour in the batter – that’s where the bowl with a beak comes in handy – and put it into the oven. Reduce the heat to 200°C / 400°F after 15 minutes and continue baking for another 45 minutes. That’s an hour in total. They’re ready when the bottoms are dark brown, but not burned.


Let them cool and eat them alongside a strong espresso. Imagine you’re sitting in a French street café in the sunshine and it will feel like a little vacation.

Parmesan-crusted chicken. Perfect with salad.


This is one of the recipes I found on the internet, lost it and then found it again on a totally different site. Turns out I found the original recipe. And turns out, there’s no such thing as Italian-flavored breadcrumbs in Germany – so I just decided to add some Italian herbs myself. And some chili flakes for an extra kick.

I imagine this chicken would also work very well with a Caesar Salad – in fact, this chicken basically is a Chicken Caesar Salad without the salad…

PARMESAN-CRUSTED CHICKEN
for 2, adapted from Hellman’s

CHICKEN
2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 250 g / 1/2 pound)
1/8 cup | 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup | 4 tablespoons mayonnaise (I used homemade)
1 teaspoon dried Italian herbs
1/2 teaspoon dried chili flakes
dash of Worcestershire sauce
2-3 tablespoons bread crumbs

SALAD
1 package/head of your favorite salad, in this case lamb’s lettuce
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce | tamari
6 tablespoons cream


Cut the chicken breasts into nice medallions, about finger thick. I’m super picky about fat, silver skin and veins, so I cut it all away.

Place them in an oven-proof dish, for example a non-stick pan or a glass/ceramic casserole. And set your oven to 425°F / 220°C.


Mix together Parmesan cheese and the spices. Be creative! Maybe some sun-dried tomatoes or fresh rosemary would be nice.


Measure in the mayonnaise, I prefer homemade.


Stir it all together and give it a taste.

This is also a great dip. And you can make awesome garlic bread with it. Just smear it thickly onto the bread and pop it into the oven until golden brown and delicious.


But back to the chicken. Spread the mayo-cheese mixture onto the chicken bits. Try to coat everything evenly.


Then sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top and pop it into the oven for 10-20 min. – until it’s golden brown and cooked through.


Ah. Golden brown deliciousness!


While the chicken is in the oven, wash your favorite salad (Romaine lettuce would also be nice).

And it’s time to make the dressing. Super simple, really! Just mix together soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and cream.


Just mix them together and you’ll have a perfect salad dressing.

And if you think about it, it’s even low-fat… You will say: “Cream? Low-fat? Yeah right.” But look at it this way: Oil is 99% fat, cream has 30% fat. Do the math.


Arrange salad, dressing and crunchy chicken on a plate and tuck in!

Upside down pineapple carrot cake. Who needs frosting?


This simply is a great cake. Or muffin. My mom has a friend called Debbie and she’s from Texas, but has been living in Germany for a long time. She once made the cake when I was a teenager and I was blown away. It was cinnamony, had complex flavors and the concept of carrots in a cake was absolutely new to me, She was kind enough to give me the recipe and I have baked it since on uncounted occasions. It’s great every time: fluffy on the inside, somewhat spicy, nuts and caramelized top for the crunch, pineapples for juiciness. I’ve never made a frosting for this cake (it would be a shame to cover up those beautiful pineapples) and personally, I don’t think it needs one.

But if you really insist on putting something on this cake, some vanilla ice cream goes tremendously well with it. Especially if the cake is still warm.

UPSIDE DOWN PINEAPPLE CARROT CAKE
12 muffins or 1 cake (26 cm / 10 inch diameter)

2 cups / 1/2 liter carrots, finely grated (4-6 carrots)
butter for the pie pan
brown sugar for the pie pan
1 can sliced or diced pineapples, drained well
1 1/2 cups / 180 g flour
1 1/2 cups / 300 g sugar
1/2 cup / 60 g chopped nuts, eg pecans or almonds
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup /180 ml vegetable oil
3 eggs
(vanilla ice cream or whipped cream for serving, optional)


First of all, preheat your oven to 190°C / 375°.Then start peeling and grating the carrots until you have enough. You could do this by hand, but I recommend some kind of machinery (I use my Kitchen Aid). Carrots are kinda hard and will cost you a lot of time and elbow grease to get them all down to bits. Not to mention fingernails.


Time to prep the cake pans. I like the silicon pans from Téfal (called T-Fal in the US, I believe), because they have a metal support ring so they’re not wobbly. Smear the insides thickly and thoroughly with butter, then fill about a tablespoon coarse brown sugar in each mold and tap and shake and turn until all buttery sides are coated with sugar (do this over the sink). Then put in a piece of well-drained pineapple.

Yeah, I know. They say you don’t have to butter silicon pans for baking pans. I don’t believe it. I’ve had a couple of cakes destroyed because the pan didn’t release it. And besides, you do like a crunchy caramel crust on your cake, don’t you?


This time, I made the double amount of cake, so I also prepped a regular cake pan.


Time to get out a big bowl. Measure in the flour and the sugar. By the way, if you don’t like sifting your flour, just stir it a couple of times with your wire whisk until you see no more lumps.


Now add the baking powder and soda, the nuts (in this case slivered almonds), salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger, then mix it all together.


In another bowl, mix together the oil and the eggs.

Don’t be surprised about the 7 yolks – I made the double amount of dough and I added and extra egg because the eggs were so small.


Pour the egg-mixture gingerly on top of the flour-mixture. Kinda looks like a giant egg, doesn’t it?


Now stir it all together until you see a dough forming. Don’t overmix and don’t worry about some flour lumps left – 10 to 15 strokes should be enough. I guess it’s better to have some lumps in your cake than a tough cake – or muffins with big, tunnel-like holes.


Add the grated carrots and carefully mix them in, then equally distribute the dough on the muffin tins or in the cake pan. I recently found out that a disher (some call it ice cream scoop) is the perfect tool for that.


Feels good when a job is done!


Bake the muffins for about 20 minutes and the cake 40 minutes.


Get them out of the oven, let everything cool for at least 15 minutes (so that the caramel crust sets a bit), then turn the cake/muffin pan upside down and carefully pop them out.


Don’t they look great? Shiny, golden brown, juicy, crunchy, soft. Would be a shame to cover it all with frosting… Serve them as they are (great for breakfast) or with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

ANZAC biscuits. Cookies from down under.


Are you also obsessed with foreign supermarkets? When I came to New Zealand 3 years ago, I spent hours in the supermarket, inspecting every row and wondering about many products, looking desperately for others. And of course buying quite a lot to try them out. And everywhere around NZ you will find ANZAC cookies next to the well-known classics like chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies. After wondering and reading the package, I found out that these cookies were originally sent from families to members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) abroad. I guess they were made without eggs so that they would keep better when being sent halfway around the globe. But nowadays you can make vegan cookies by substituting the butter with a good margarine. 

These cookies are a bit on the hard side, so don’t give them to your granny. Unless of course you don’t mind dipping them into hot coffee or tea. Oh, and by the way: tomorrow (25. April) is ANZAC day!


ANZAC BISCUITS
adapted from Lottie + Doof

1 cup flour
1 cup oats
1 cup shredded dried coconut
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 untreated lemon or orange, just the zest (optional)
100 g / 1 stick butter, melted (or good quality margarine for vegan cookies)
2 tablespoons honey or golden, rice or maple syrup
1 tablespoon boiling water
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (sodium bicarbonate/natron)


Preheat your oven to 190°C / 375°F, as this recipe is really quick.

Grab a big mixing bowl and fill in the flour, the coconut and the oats. 


Add the sugar, the lemon or orange zest if you like – and don’t forget the salt! Mix all the dry stuff together.

It sounds a bit crazy, but sweet stuff tastes better with a little bit of salt – and salty stuff tastes better with a little bit of sugar. Think of tomato sauce: a little bit of sugar makes a huge difference.


Melt the butter together with the honey or syrup. Be gentle, don’t let it cook or burn. You just want it liquid, not boiling.


Dissolve the baking soda in a tablespoon of hot water. Then mix it with the melted butter. It will foam up a bit, nothing to worry about.


Now you can pour the butter mixture into the dry mixture. Mix it with your favorite tool – mine being an old wooden spoon.


Now try if you have a good consistency. You want a crumbly mixture that will somehow hold its shape when you press it together. If it doesn’t yet keep together, add a bit more melted butter – not water, as they would become terribly hard and impossible to bite through.


I like to form the cookies with my measuring tablespoon, so that they are all round and have about the same size. You can also use a disher / ice cream scoop or simply roll balls with 1.5 inch / 4 cm diameter to make much bigger cookies.

For baking, you will have to set them at least an inch / 3 cm apart. Here, they are much too close because I froze them and bagged / labeled them as soon as they were solid. There’s no need to do that, but I find that this recipe makes much too many cookies for 2 persons to eat. That’s why I like to make a full – or even double – batch and freeze most of it. But you go ahead and bake it all.


So for baking, set them a bit apart on parchment paper or on a silicone mat and pop them in the oven for 15 minutes.


Get them out of the oven and let them cool. Eat them alongside your favorite caffeinated hot beverage.

Citrus fillets. How to get them.

Maybe you’re like me and you don’t like the tough white skins on citrus fruits. So when I realized that there’s an easy way to cut around them and only have the orange flesh, I was in heaven.

And it’s really easy to to, just follow the steps:


Cut off the top and the bottom of the orange. Just look for the navel and the stem and cut away about 5 mm / 1/4 inch thick slices from both ends. Make sure there is no white skin left – if there is, cut away another thin slice till the cut section looks all orange.


Place the orange with a cut side down on a cutting board (with those juicy oranges it helps to have a little groove around the edge of the board). Start at the top and cut away the peel. Make kind of a semicircle movement and try to get off as much as possible of the white stuff, while leaving as much as possible of the orange stuff.


Work your way around the fruit, then take it into your hands and check for white spots.


Now look for the widest wedges, because they’re the easiest starting point. Hold it in your left hand like a tennis ball (if you’re a lefty, hold it in your right hand, of course), so that you see the segments and not the navels. Cut along the white walls to get out a wedge. Turn the fruit and cut out the next wedge. Continue until you have only walls left in your hand and all the citrus wedges in a bowl. If you want to, you can now squeeze the walls to get out all the juice – that’s a bit of a mess.

This works for every kind of citrus, except maybe kumquats (where even I eat the peel) and buddah’s hands… But I cut lemons, oranges, grapefruit that way and it’s getting easier every time…

Spaghetti Bolognese. Hearty, chunky, highly aromatic.


Isn’t curious that half the world eats Spaghetti with Bolognese sauce, except the Italians? They think we are all crazy eating fine, delicate noodles with a thick and chunky ragú. Or even worse: with meatballs.
I admit, getting the appropriate amount of pasta and sauce into your mouth is not really easy with this combination. Either you roll the spaghetti on your fork and all the ground beef falls off. Or you try to scoop up some sauce and the long pasta strands falls of. Feel free to cook rigatoni, ruote, conchiglie or whatever you like. But I stick with Spaghetti, because nothing beats the taste of childhood memories.

PASTA ALLA BOLOGNESE

1 kg / 2 pounds ground beef
2-4 tablespoons olive oil
6 thick slices bacon, diced
2 onions, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1/2 cup tomato paste
1 cup / 250 ml red wine
1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper
Parmesan rinds
bay leaves
rosemary and thyme
chili flakes
a splash of balsamic vinegar
125 g / 1/2 pound of your favorite pasta per person


This depends on what you like – I prefer buying grinding the meat myself. That’s because I recently had the bad luck of getting gristle and bone bits on store-bought ground beef.


Cut the onion and the bacon into chunks. No need to chop everything into tiny bits. Also, cut the carrots into cubes. I like to quarter them and cut away 5 mm thick slices.


Take your biggest and heaviest pan and heat it up on medium-high on the stove.
This one: Le Creuset. I love it.


Fry the ground meat. I like to put in half of it and then the other half. I sometimes happens if I put all in that the pan cools down too much – and that results in water being sucked out of the meat. That’s bad.


If the meat is cooked done and you see some brown bits, add the bacon, the onions and the carrots. It’s getting kinda full, but that’s OK. Let it all cook for a couple of minutes until the onions are getting soft.


Now add the tomato paste, the red wine, sugar, salt and pepper, the herbs and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Top off with enough water to cover it all. Let it cook at least 30 minutes on medium-low and add more water if too much evaporates. Meanwhile, cook your pasta in salted water.

The Parmesan rinds simply the rest of your cheese pieces that not even a Microplane grater can persuade to give away tinier bits. I collect them in my fridge in a Tupperware container and they keep for ages. They not a must in this sauce, but if you cook the sauce for quite a bit (more than an hour), they will give the sauce a deep, complex flavor – just like the bay leaves. So it’s kind of a secret ingredient.


Serve the pasta along with the sauce and top it off with huge amounts of Parmesan.

Tortellini. Simply with cream and ham.


Cream? Again?

TORTELLINI WITH CREAM AND HAM

500 g / 1 pound / 2 packages fresh tortellini, either filled with meat/ham or spinach/ricotta
1 large onion, diced
200 g / 1/2 pound cooked ham, cut into strips
200 ml / 1 cup cream – maybe more
60 ml / 1/4 cup white wine, optional
nutmeg, freshly ground
salt and pepper
fresh parsley, chopped


Dice the onion your favorite way. Not too fine though, you still want to taste it afterwards.


Next, cut the ham into strips, I like them 2 cm / 1 inch long and 5 mm / 1/4 inch wide. It’s really easy: cut the ham slices into inch-wide long strips, stack them on top of each other and start cutting away 5 mm slices.


Get out your largest non-stick pan, heat it up on medium-low and let the butter melt. While you’re at it, heat up a pot with lots of salt water for the tortellini.


Gently cook the onions in the butter for several minutes, you want the soft and translucent, but no color. Add the ham and let it heat up in the pan – no need for browning here, either.


When the water boils, throw in the tortellini and cook them. The ones I bought were fresh and only needed 2 minutes. Tortellini are so easy, they start floating to the top when they are ready.


Fish the floating tortellini out with a slotted spoon and put them into the pan. Mix with the ham and the onions.


If you have a little rest of white wine sitting in your fridge, now’s the time to use it. Add to the pan and let nearly everything of it evaporate, then add the cream. If you’re not using wine, just add the cream. Yeah, all of it. And a couple of glugs extra.

Season with salt, pepper and quite a bit of fresh ground nutmeg – and let it cook for a couple of minutes until the cream thickens a bit. If you like, you can season with a dash of lemon juice.


Sprinkle with parsley and enjoy!

Fruit smoothie. Throw in whatever you like.


When I was a child, my mom often made fruit smoothies for me and my brother. At that time, that kind of drink was completely unknown in Germany and my mom called it “liquado” because of her past in Argentina. She bought a US-made blender and that’s the one I’m still using today!

I’m not on a diet – heavens no! – but on the Good Eats episode “Live and let diet“, Alton Brown has some very interesting points on making smoothies:

  • Buy overripe bananas in bulk, then peel and freeze them. 
  • When turning on your blender, start on the lowest setting and move your way up slowly. 
  • Make sure you always see a “vortex” – if not, start over at the lowest setting.

And if you don’t have a blender, then use a tall vessel and a stick blender. It’s a bit messier, but the taste is the same…

I always liked bananas in my smoothie – it’s what I use as a base – and then I add everything fruity I have at home. If you’re lactose intolerant, leave out the milk and use water or soy milk instead. If you’re vegan, leave out the honey, too. If you think you need some extra protein, add a raw egg or just the egg yolk.
And if you have fructose malabsorption, use the fruits your stomach is comfortable with. In my case, bananas and oranges are fine. And I’m still testing the red fruits.

FRUIT SMOOTHIE
for 2

1 banana (frozen or not)
1 orange, cut into segments
1 cup frozen red berries
1 tablespoon honey or sugar
1 cup of milk or water


Peel the banana and put it in the blender. Peel the orange and cut it into segments. That’s just me, I don’t like the white stuff. If you don’t mind it, just make sure you don’t have any pits left, they’re bitter.


Grab a cup of frozen berries, in this case, red and black currants and blackberries.


Put the berries into the blender, top off with milk, soy milk or water and start your engine. Begin on the lowest setting and work your way up to high speed – and mix it for a couple of minutes. Divide onto 2 glasses and serve with a straw. Drink slowly, unless you like ice cream headaches.