Fresh Start

There's something very satisfying about beginning anew -- or even just counting down to the day when you're going to jump into being the better you.

For me, May is Deadline Month -- but I have to feel optimistic when it seems like summer is peeking round the corner. While I wouldn't say that I'm that student living off takeaway, pot noodles, and oven chip sandwiches (all of which are delicious and I kind of wish that I hadn't written them since it's been months since I've had a chip sandwich but oh well), there are definitely numerous aspects of my diet that I could improve.

My aim for the first of May was to kick-start the new me (who says things like "I'll just have a salad" and "There's no way I'll ever finish all this") with a 24-hour fruit detox. Yeah, I just made that up. I liked the idea of a green/mint tea detox to flush out my system ... but I felt faint just as the thought of not eating food for a full day.

So, I decided to compromise. My mother "kindly donated" an old smoothie maker in that considerate way parents have of offloading the crap they no longer want, and I set to work on creating my own concoctions. I tried to look at recipes online, I really did, but they wanted things that sounded either incredibly expensive (organic goji berries: sound delicious but don't think my bank balance agrees), incredibly disgusting (celery and kale that I couldn't stomach raw never mind blended into something I'm meant to drink), or just too complicated -- who wants to be chopping and slicing six different vegetables at 08:30 just for breakfast? Naturally, in my typical gung-ho style I chucked a load of fruit in a blender with some soya milk and here are the results.

Breakfast: Raspberry Smoothie

The raspberry probably turned out the best of the trio.

I tipped a punnet of raspberries (one of the shallow packs from Lidl) into the blender, filled up to the 500ml line with soya milk, and blended.

Lunch: Strawberry Smoothie

This one seemed a little too much like strawberry milk for my liking.

I think my mistake was blending the strawberries (medium-sized punnet, stalks removed) before the milk, so that it reduced quite a bit and I added too much milk. Next time I'd do the same as with the raspberries, and just chuck it all in and blend together.

Dinner: Mango Smoothie

I have to admit that this one was a bit of a disaster. I used half a mango and removed the flesh from the skin; I usually eat the skin with the flesh, but didn't feel adventurous enough to add it in with the smoothie. Basically, it ended up as thick gloopy milk with a vague mango flavouring. Not good. Next time I'll try half and half water and milk, and see how that goes.

It does feel quite invigorating to have fruit smoothies for breakfast rather than toast or cereal, so it's going to be something I keep trying. Please add a comment if you have some tasty, easy, cheap breakfast smoothie recipes to share, or if you just feel like commenting.

P.S. This post was brought to you by candlelight.