Zizi's Adventures - Real Food, Real Stories

Cooling Cinnamon Sour Cherry Juice

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I love summer because there are so many vegetables and fruits we can eat. What I don’t love that summer slip away so quickly and there are no more fresh strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, peaches, apricots and watermelons. 
Going back to make our breakfast juices from apples, oranges, bananas, lemons and mandarins again, is not very tempting. That’s why I always try to add something new, something green to our juices to make them a bit more exciting. The health benefits of juicing are really great. The body can quickly absorb larger amounts of nutrients from juices than from solid foods because the process of digestion that is necessary when you eat whole foods is bypassed. Raw fruits and vegetables contain many substances that enhance health, and juicing benefits the body by providing the most concentrated and readily absorbed source of these substances.

Another one of the major health benefits of juicing is that it is an easy way to get beneficial enzymes, which are primarily found in raw foods, into the body. Enzymes in fresh fruits and vegetables have the vital role of converting food into body tissue and energy.

Cooling Cinnamon Sour Cherry Juice

Ingredients

– 400 g sour cherries, pitted
– 20-30 ml cold water
– 1 teaspoon cinnamon
– 1 teaspoon honey
– ice cube

Method

Place all ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. If you find it too thick, add more water. Pour into prepared glasses, add some ice cubes and drink your liquid breakfast!

Flour free Banana and Blueberry Pancakes

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I love making pancakes on lazy weekends. It’s so good not getting up early, not rushing to work. Instead of these I go to the kitchen, make the batter; then we sit down, eat the pancakes and just enjoy the delicious moment of the morning.
I found the recipe on one of my favourite healthy, vegetarian blogs, Green Kitchen Stories. I love David & Luise’s recipes that are so comforting, nutritious and oh so delicious. After making these pancakes I did a bit of searching on the Internet about berries and currants. There are so many of them, I didn’t even know about. In Hungary we ususally grow, use and eat strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries and redcurrants. These are the most known berries. I know about mulberries, lingonberries, jostaberries, whitecurrants and blackcurrants but these are difficult to find in markets. 
The most interesting ones I haven’t heard about: olallieberry (a cross between the loganberry and the youngberry, each of which is itself a cross between blackberry and another berry – raspberry and dewberry, respectively), loganberry (an octaploid hybrid produced from crossing a hexaploid apomictic blackberry and a tetraploid raspberry), youngberry (is a hybrid between a blackberry and a dewberry, both members of the genus rubus of the rose family, first cultivated in the western United States), dewberries (a group of species closely related to the blackberries, they are small brambles with berries reminiscent of the raspberry, but are usually purple to black instead of red), boysenberries (a cross between a European raspberry, a common blackberry and a loganberry), and pineberries (a strawberry cultivar owned by breeder Hans de Jongh and commercialized by VitalBerry BV in Made, The Netherlands, and publicized in Germany in April, 2009, as Ananaserdbeere, or white pineapple strawberry). Wikipedia still mentions a few like Pacific blackberry, Himalayan blackberry, Santiam berry, Chehalem blackberry and marionberry. Hope I can try all of them one day.

Did you know about all these kind of berries? Which is your favorite one?

Flour free Banana and Blueberry Pancakes

Ingredients (serves 2)

– 1,5 ripe bananas, peeled, mashed with a fork
– 3/4 cup blueberries (frozen)
– 3 organic eggs
– 60-70 g desiccated coconut
– 1 tablespoon cinnamon
– coconut oil

Method

In a bowl whisk the eggs then mix together with the bananas. Add desiccated coconut, cinnamon  and blueberries and stir it together. Prepare a non-stick pan with 2 teaspoons coconut oil on medium heat. Spoon batter into pan, forming 2 small pancakes. Cook until lightly brown on the bottom. Turn and brown the other side. Serve with blueberries, honey or maple syrup.

Easy Greek Dessert

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We slowly run out of our Greek products: the yoghurt and pistachios. I am a bit sad of this because I really like the pistachios we bought on the island of Aegina. It would be nice to have continuous supply from the island. If you want something sweet for a quick snack or something delicious for breakfast, make this dessert. Not only does it taste amazing, this dessert is so simple to make you hardly need a recipe. Both yogurt and honey are great for the digestive system, and the combined tastes are so yum.
Did you know that Greek yogurt (yiaourti) has been around for thousands of years? Yogurt itself might be as old as 10000 years, which is much older than the oldest Greeks. It didn’t get popular outside Greece until the first wave of Greek emigration to Western Europe and the US after World War I.

Easy Greek Dessert

Ingredients (serves 2)

– 200 g Greek yoghurt
– 8 teaspoons honey
– small handful toasted pistachio, roughly chopped

Method

In a dry pan toast the pistachio for 3-5 minutes, then peel them. Divide the yoghurt into 2 serving bowls, drizzle 4-4 teaspoons honey over the yoghurt and sprinkle with the toasted pistachio.

Vegan Lemon-Poppy Seed Pancake

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Weekdays I only have time to drink freshly squeezed juices and herbal or yogi tea for breakfast. At work I eat fruits until lunch. I love weekends when we have time to make proper breakfast and we can laze around for a while. Last time I made Alkaline Sisters’ vegan pancake. This is a similar version, I only changed a few ingredients.

Vegan Lemon-Poppy Seed Pancake

Ingredients (makes 8 pancakes)

– 1 and 1/4 cup whole grain spelt flour and white spelt flour mix
– 3 tablespoons ground almond
– 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
– 1 and 1/2 tablespoons aluminium free baking powder
– 1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeded
– 1 organic lemon’s zest
– 1 cup oat milk
– 2 tablespoons sunflower oil
– 1 tablespoon agave syrup
– pinch of salt
– coconut oil for the pan

Method

In a bowl mix together the dry ingredients: flours, almond, poppy seeds, baking powder and salt. In another one mix together the wet ingredients: oat milk, oil, agave syrup, vanilla and lemon zest. Give each mixture a stir then add the wet to the dry combining just until mixed. Set aside for 5 minutes to allow batter to rise. Prepare a non-stick pan with 1/4 teaspoon coconut oil on medium heat. Spoon batter into pan, forming 2 small pancakes. Cook until lightly brown on the bottom. Turn and brown the other side. Serve with lemon wedges and agave syrup.

Vegan Hazelnut-Vanilla Pancake

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I love pancakes! Hungarian pancakes are larger and thinner than  the American ones. We serve it with cocoa or jam and roll up. I have never done vegan pancakes before, so it was high time for that. 🙂  Even if I did change the milk to coconut milk or oat milk, I always used eggs. Then I found a vegan pancake recipe on Alkaline Sisters blog and I fell in love with the concept. I wrote a comment for them because I really liked what they wrote about (Why We Wait to Improve Our Lifestyle when Cancer Lurks). Then we continued “talking” in emails… I have found out that Julie’s and Yvonne’s dad was Hungarian and he came from Szeged, my hometown! OMG, it is a small world, again!!! Unfortunately they lost contact with their relatives but I promised to help as much as I can to find them.

I did a few changes in the recipe. E.G. I used oat milk instead of almond milk and I added some ground hazelnut to the batter. And it turned out great.

Vegan Hazelnut-Vanilla Pancake

Ingredients (makes 8 pancakes)

– 1 and 1/4 cup white spelt flour
– 1/4 cup ground hazelnut
– 2 tablespoons aluminium free baking powder
– 1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeded
– 1 cup oat milk
– 2 tablespoons sunflower oil
– 1 tablespoon agave syrup
– pinch of salt
– coconut oil for the pan

Method

In a bowl mix together the dry ingredients: flour, hazelnut, baking powder, salt. In another one mix together the wet ingredients: oat milk, oil, agave syrup and vanilla. Give each mixture a stir then add the wet to the dry combining just until mixed. Set aside for 5 minutes to allow batter to rise.

Prepare a non-stick pan with 1/4 teaspoon coconut oil on medium heat. Spoon batter into pan, forming 2 small pancakes. Cook until lightly brown on the bottom. Turn and brown the other side.

I served it with more agave syrup and tangerines.