Kitchen Experiment: Banana "Ice-cream"

Although I love to eat, I don't think I would make a very good food critic.  Even if I have the amazing ability to discern different tastes, I am much to emotion.  I can go from loving to hating in a blink of an eye.  Banana is on the top of the love-hate list.  I love bananas - it makes a quick and easy breakfast when I get up 5 minutes before the bus arrives; it's sweet and you can't go too wrong with anything sweet (and anything fat for that matter). But I also dislike bananas sometimes to a point that it disgusts me just to see their yellow skin.  One of the most hypocritical thing I do is to recommend people adding fruits such as bananas into their cereal or oatmeal in the morning (which I totally won't do at home).  Please forgive me because that was the most standard and easy answers to too many situations.

Anyway, when I came across this idea of blending frozen bananas to make ice-cream, I was very skeptical.  But as a dietitian, I have to say - whoever invented this was a genius!  Because I personally know people who love ice-cream, but they really shouldn't be having ice-cream too often. And there's really no such thing as healthy ice-cream because ice-cream by nature requires fat to give it the gooey texture that a lot of people love.  So here comes this healthier one-ingredient ice-cream (it might not be the exact texture, but it satisfies the craving):

Ingredient (just one): Bananas!
Steps: Peel and cut up bananas (I froze the whole banana the first time. Trust me, it's not a good idea). Freeze the bananas for 1-2 hours. Throw them into a food processor or blender and blend until it's creamy and gooey (almost soft-serve-like texture).  Enjoy!

Kitchen Experiment: My Life in Green Juices

I have been contemplating about doing a little juice experiment for a while.  I had a juicing machine for a while but I was not very happy when I had to throw out a lot of pulp.  Firstly, that was not very cost-efficient (my whole bag of carrots disappeared after 2-3 days of juice-making). Secondly, I wasn't happy with the amount of food waste.  Thirdly, my inner dietitian screamed at me for wasting the most nutritious parts of everything I put into the juicer (there goes all the fiber in your vegetables!!! unacceptable). 

After a long internal debate between the inner dietitian, experimenter and financial chief, the Oster blender proved to be a pretty good investment (depending on how long it lasts). 

Blending fruits and vegetables into juices/smoothies is good because (1) you don't kill the enzymes with all the cooking; (2) the action of the blade when blending may actually release or activate anti-oxidants; (3) combining a variety of fruits/vegetables can be beneficial - say spinach and orange - the Vitamin C in oranges actually aids absorption of the Iron in the spinach; (4) no waste as in you actually consume everything you put into the blender!

I usually just let my creativity decides what to put into the blender that particular day.  But some good things to stock in the fridge are carrots, spinach, cucumber, stalks of celery, apples, oranges and bananas.  For the juice of the day (pictured above), it has spinach (a handful), cucumber slices (another handful), two oranges and one banana (peeled, of course). 

It tastes good and you get your daily dose of fruit/vegetables - that makes a happy me!