Fruit of the Month: Cherries!

Who doesn't love cherries?? (My sister, apparently. Crazy!) I have been eating cherries like they were air this season. I have been buying cherries for $7.99/kg at my fruit shop for a couple of weeks now - they are the reject cherries marked down because no one would buy them at the normal price (15 or so dollars/kg) but I think they are still good, especially used in what I've been using them in!

Cherries are apparently an aid to sufferes of gout (and arthritis) - the flavonoids in the cherry juice help reduce uric acid levels in the blood stream. Doesn't work for everyone, but it does for many! They also taste good. For only 87 calories per 1 cup serve, they make an excellent snack choice for anyone. (Not that I care about the caloric content - I'd eat the whole kilo if I wouldn't feel sick!) That same one cup serving also has 3% of your daily iron needs, 16% of your vitamin C and 2% of your calcium. [Source: nutritiondata.com]

Now for some uses:

Freeze them for the long cold winter ahead of us. I've found this to come in handy. I've hardly bought any frozen berries lately (because my freezer is full of containers of cherries) and pitting all the cherries is quite relaxing. I just cut them in half, twist it apart and then pry out the pit with a knife. Don't cut yourself. Apparently if you freeze them whole they'll take on an almond flavour from the pit. I just put it all into plastic takeaway containers (or whatever container you want) and freeze. When I need to use them it only takes a second to pry them apart (once you get one the whole lot usually falls apart).

Use them in a tart or pie. (Top right obviously). This was our Christmas dessert table! I contributed the Pear Frangipane Tart from the Post Punk Kitchen. Everyone loved it. I've made it twice now. I'm sure the pear version is lovely, but I don't think pears are in season here right now. But when they are I'm totally making it. Again.

Put them in your breakfast smoothie. I have smoothies for breakfast quite often. Since my old food processor finally carked it (JUST when I was about to start making my christmas tart) and I bought myself a fancy pants new one with a blender attachment, smoothies will be much more regular. Here's one I had this morning:

Cherry-Almond Smoothie

I small frozen banana

1 cup frozen cherries

30g (1/3 cup) almond meal

30g (1/3 cup) rolled oats

1 tbsp chia seeds

1 1/2 cups slmond milk

Blend. Makes about 2 cups.

This smoothie provides:  17g protein, 28% daily calcium, 10% daily iron, 23g fat (only 2 of which are saturated). Not bad huh? I was pretty impressed. It also lasted me for like, 3 hours.

Bake them into a cake or muffins. I made Lemon cherry muffins by Vegan in Bellingham. I chose this recipe while searching 'vegan cherry muffins' on the net because I already had all the ingredients. And they are so good. I made them yesterday afternoon and there's only 3 left. Good thing they are relatively good for you :)

And last, but not least, ice cream! I was gifted with an ice cream maker for Christmas from my mum and HOOFUCKINGRAY! I tested the wodnerful machine out today with a basic vanilla ice cream with what was supposed to be blasamic cherry swirl, but it turned out a little more like cherry ice cream. I used the lazy vanilla ice cream from A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise blog, except instead of creamer I used a can and abit of coconut cream. Unfortunately the shop only had light in the cheap brand, but full fat would definately have been better. This ice cream still rocks my world though!

I cooked 2 cups of pitted cherries down with 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar. This would be good on top of plain vanilla ice cream too, but I wanted something fancy for my first time use of the Wonder Machine! I'd chop the cherries up into little bits next time because I had to mash them this time and one squirted me in the eye. I thought I'd go blind. I didn't, obviously. So anyway, I let the ice cream maker do it's job for 20 minutes, and then I blobbed in this sauce (and 1/4 cup cacao nibs) and let it swirl around for a few minutes. Oooh it's good. The balsamic adds just a touch of a different flavour as an aftertaste. yum. I've had to stop myself from eating the whole lot. it's not even frozen yet!

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Happy cherry eating! I hope they stay cheap for just a little while longer...I want to freeze more for when I hibernate.

Fruit of the Month: Pineapple

I figured it was about time to do another fruit of the month, since it's been, well, months! The last one I did was the humble avocado. This month  I shall showcase the pineapple! Who doesn't love pineapple?

I noticed the other day that my little pineapple that I took from work had turned yellow all of a sudden! So I decided to cut it off and eat it that afternoon.

Here is a size comparison: a normal mug next to it, and a gigantic pineapple we had bought the same day we went strawberry picking!

We enjoyed it simply stuck on toothpicks with some of the straberry haul. It was quite sweet, if a bit pale.

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A pineapple is actually a bromeliad, taking around 2-3 years to flower and fruit from planting. To grow a pineapple all you have to do is twist off the top and whack in the ground. Mine grew quite happily in a tiny 200mm pot.

I'm sure I took a picture of the flowers but I can't find it! Oh well, this will have to do.

1 cup of raw pineapple provides 2% RDI of vitamin A and Calcium, 131% of vitamin C and 3% iron (source).

We are still going through the giant pineapple from the strawberry farm, and I've been enjoying it at work in a fruit salad with orange, strawberries and kiwifruit. It's my sister's favourite fruit and she's been known to eat a whole one in a day! It hurts my mouth after a little bit so I haven't quite managed that yet :)

There are heaps of things you can do with pineapples. I prefer them as is, but you can always stick it on pizzas, on a kebab stick, in cakes, ice creams, salads, etc. Any ideas?

Fruit of the Month - Avocado!

Just in time for the end of March (already? dude) - the humble avocado!

I love love love avocado. Unfortunately they are generally expensive, but ocassionally you get quite good specials. These were $1.99 at my local fruit shop, but I've been buying them lately for up to $3.

Avocadoes are soft, creamy and very tasty. (To me. My dad reckons they taste of soap.) You can eat them as is, spread on toast, as guacamole, on pizza, on top of tacos, anything!

I've been trying to eat more fats like avocado to try and help the skin on my hands get better (may be too much info, but I have contact dermatitis all over my hands that will not go away. I've tried almost everything, except food, funnily enough!) This link has some nutritional info. Of course it is an official avocado website so it may be biased on the avocado's wonderfulness but I pretty much agree.

Some cherry tomatoes to add some colour would be awesome.

Tonight we made this 15 minute Creamy Avocado Pasta from Oh She Glows. It's literally just avocado, lemon juice, pepper and garlic. Yum. And it was so good. A very easy way to incorporate more avocado into my diet. I hope it makes a difference, alongside everything else I'm doing.

(The pasta dish cost 80c per serve for me to make, by the way).

Fruit of the Month - February '11 :)

Who doesn't love a perfectly ripe passionfruit in Summer?

This fruit is one of my fruit plants that I will be growing when the space comes to me (along with limes, lemons, blueberries and mulberries). In the meantime I can buy packs of about 10 small fully ripe passionfruit at the fruit shop for about $2. Awesome.

Lately I've just been enjoying them by themselves, or mixed into the yoghurt I take to work, but maybe I'll try me a passionfruit cheesecake! Or passionfruit ice cream...there's an idea.

Ripe passionfruit are dark purple and wrinkly. If you've bought smooth unripe passionfruit a few days on your countertop should do the trick.

A book I got for Christmas has an entire chapter dedicated to passionfruit. The Kitchen Garden Companion by Stephanie Alexander has a few recipes in it using this fruit. The Passionfruit and Dried Apricot Jam on page 493 sounds pretty darn good to me (except for the 1.5 kg of white sugar!!)

Fruit of the Month - Tamarillo

Tamarillo! I have had one of these before, ages ago, probably in New Zealand, but I couldn't remember what it tasted like. Though I did remember that I liked it, which was the main thing. (Then again, I remember liking corned beef but I doubt I'll ever pick some up in the supermarket just to recap ;)).

I wasn't sure how to eat it. Do I just bite into it like an apple? Hmm. I eventually decided to just cut it in half and eat it like a kiwifruit.

Yuuuuuuuummmm. I just scopped out the inside bits with a teaspoon and ate it. You just sort of swallow it (lots of seeds) rather than chew. It's a lot like a passionfruit. It even tastes a bit like a passionfruit. The one I bought was still a little bitter, but I don't mind. It's part of the Solanacae family, ie, the same family as tomatoes so it does have a little bit of characteristic tartness.

First I started just eating the seeds then decided to just eat the whole lot. Not sure if the skin is edible but I think it is gathering from just the introduction on this website. If only I could afford more of them! I'd love to try it in muffins. Unfortunately they cost $1.94 each at the moment, and I'm pretty sure I can't justify buying a whole heap. Damn.

Fruit of the month!

I always like to try a new fruit or vegetable every now and then, and now that I work at a fruit shop with a pretty good variety of exotics, I can just pick something up!

This one is called a Wax Jambu (or jambo as the sign at work spelled it ;)) and it is the fruit of a species of Lilly Pilly (Syzigium samarangense). This website has a little bit of information about it.

I have eaten other types of lilly pilly fruit in the past, and liked them, so I just had to buy these and try :) (For some reason the first search that came up was a vegan website lol).

The wax jambu is like eating a star fruit (or carambola) but without the acid. It's freakin delicious, and today if I get to work early I'm going to buy more. One for every day of the week!

The neighbours have lined their fence with small-leaved lilly pillys (second link) and they just went into flower, which means - fruit! Their trees happen to be dropping over MY fence therefore they are up for grabs. Unfortunately, I think the possums have gotten to the blossoms...they have stripped the other neighbours avocado tree of it's flowers, and the other neighbours mango tree of it's flowers (me = very sad) so it wouldn't surprise me if the lilly pilly flowers are gone too.

So worth the $8.99/kg price ticket. It's not that expensive - they barely weigh anything.

I knwo of a few quandong trees in a public space that I may be able to get fruit off, too...at least I'm sure I can gather the fruits that have fallen to the ground. Muaha.

I had this randomly delicious meal for lunch today. I wasn't expecting it to taste so good :) It's basically brown rice, Fry's Chicken Nuggets, and sautee'd kale, beetroot stems, sliced ginger and garlic with vegan butter and a blob of vegan tom yum soup paste. I drizzled soy sauce over the top, but may have put too much because it was a bit salty...I even managed to get in a bit of weights work while I was waiting for the rice to cook! Not much, but it was something. I've been quite slack lately. Usually only managing a couple of sun salutes in the mornings, which is better than nothing I suppose.