Smoothie Packs: How An Hour A Week Can Help You Be Healthier

Disclaimer: I haven't been paid to promote any products, just wanted to share my afternoon of smoothie pack making :)

Hi Honeys,
I'm sorry I haven't been around for a few days.  This hasn't been a great week so far, I'm afraid.  My shifts last weekend were very busy and left me pretty much exhausted.  Usually I would rest on Sunday (and sometimes Monday too if the weekend was really draining) and then be back to myself again.

Unfortunately, this didn't happen this past week.  I haven't felt so completely drained for a while and as all spoonies know, there is no fighting it, we just have to rest till it's over :/  I'm so sorry honeys, I don't do pity parties I really don't. I just wanted to apologise for going missing and to explain why.  Not to worry though, I'm feeling a little more like me and yesterday I even managed to set about cleaning, peeling & chopping fruit to make up some baggies for the freezer :)

You know what honeys? I really enjoyed yesterday afternoon.  After being so drained and feeling so awful all week I was determined to try to achieve something, anything.  So off I went into the kitchen and gathered all of the fruit we had languishing in the fridge, fruit bowl etc all together.  Once that was done, an apron was put on and I set about preparing it. 

First, as always, I added warm (not hot) water to my kitchen bowl. Then I mixed through a little white vinegar (I usually add two or three capfuls) before adding the apples & pears and letting them soak for a while.  A few minutes is long enough and don't worry about the vinegar honeys, the fruit is then rinsed in fresh water again and the vinegar can't be tasted on the fruit.

    

While the apples and the pears were soaking and getting lovely and clean, I peeled some yummy satsumas. Once done I set their bowl to one side.

 

Next I rinsed the apples and pears I'd left soaking to get clean.  It never fails to surprise me how incredibly dirty fruit is when it's brought home from the shops. Even pre-packaged fruit which has had a bag to prevent it being handled too much (ick) is very dirty.  The colour of the water shows this when its washed.  Wash your fruit honeys!

First an admission, usually I carefully plan my smoothie bags before shopping but since this was being done "just because" I was using what we had on hand in the kitchen.  Oddly enough, this worked out quite well :) Alongside the bowl of peeled Satsumas, I soon added two bowls of apples, one of Golden Delicious and the other was Gala. Yum!    

These were soon joined by bowls of banana and pears.....

There were also some lovely kiwi fruits too....

Yet another admission honeys, what another one, Rosie? :) I used to use a vegetable peeler to de-fuzz kiwi fruits, until a while ago I discovered this.....

 

Genius! It's so easy to do and lets me make lovely, perfect kiwi fruit slices for fruit salads or cake toppings or anything else that needs pretty kiwi fruit slices :)  I wanted to add a link to this lady's blog but it doesn't seem to exist at it's old address anymore :/ Does anyone know if she blogs elsewhere now?  I'd love to leave a thank you for her.  

So, back to our smoothie bags.  I always use Ikea's Istad bags because they're made from a very strong vinyl and they have a double plastic zip lock closure so everything in the bag stays in the bag.  They're also a perfect size. The smaller of the purple coloured ones hold a little over a litre, 1.2 litres to be exact and they're also incredibly inexpensive. 

So now that I had my bowls full of fruity goodness all prepared and having gone to the freezer to retrieve a couple of bags of frozen mixed berries, it was time for the fun part :) 

I got this little baggie stand to hold the bags while I fill them a while ago and I'd be lost without it now.  I have no idea who thought up the idea but whoever you are, thank you!  It means I have both hands free, one to hold the bowl I'm working with and the other to use a spoon (or fork) to pop the pieces of fruit into the bags. I don't like touching food, don't judge me :)

Those poor strawberries have ice all around them! I just looked at the photo above and felt so sorry for them! The bags were being frozen straight away and it's important not to allow frozen anything to defrost when it's being frozen again of course but still... poor wee strawberries!

I actually had fun yesterday and I now have lots of lovely baggies in the freezer all ready to be blitzed in the blender to make some yummy smoothies.  During the Winter in Scotland we live in almost constant darkness, seriously honeys, it's dark until after 9am mostly and there is no gradual darkening of the skies in the evenings either. Sometimes as early as 3pm someone flicks a celestial light switch and bam... it's pitch black outside. It's very depressing and not at all great for our health either to have so little sunshine for months on end, since the sun is the most natural way to obtain our necessary vitamin D.

This is why I like to make our little fruit bags for smoothies. Adding heaps of fruit and vegetables to our daily diet is great, and I do try. We have vegetables with dinner every night, sometimes quite sneakily actually. Mashed potato & carrot waffles anyone?  Smoothies are such a convenient way to give our day a little boost.  Hubby sometimes takes one to work with him as a change from his usual tea & biscuit "elevensies."

I'm always looking for new smoothie recipes & ideas and saw this video on youtube for healthy breakfast smoothies which look fabulous.  They're made by Sara Lynn who blogs at The Domestic Geek. You can find Sara Lynn's Youtube channel here too honeys.   

I hope you've had a wonderful week honeys and that you're looking forward to a fabulous, fun filled weekend. Smile lots and hug more, dear ones, huggles always xx