home made smoothie and fruit popsicles

I spent a winter during my college years in the Florida Keys pondering my future, just hanging around mostly in Key West sleeping out of my Ford Capri. On the Smather Beach there is this old lady selling smoothie out of her mobile smoothie van (now they call them food carts). Her smoothie was delicious especially in the hot tropical sun.

A few days ago I decide to make some smoothie inspired by hers. I used all fresh ingredients, except the pineapple. I would prefer to use fresh pineapple but it would be a bit more work and you don't always get lucky with a sweet and ripe pineapple.

very simple, just blend the fruits of your choice with a bit of whole milk and ice; do careful not to put in too much milk - i recommend roughly 1 part milk to 4 part fruit by volume to start and adjust to your preference

 amongst the fruits there is mango, banana, grapes, pineapple and juice, and watermelon

 adding a bit of blackberry syrup i made with the berry i foraged in the gorge

 i like smoothies and there is no processed sugar (except the tiny bit in my homemade blackberry syrup)

 i used some to make fruit posicles

 feel like a kid again

off to make more smoothie

Came across this news today on The Guardian :
"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that drink producer POM Wonderful can sue over allegations that Coca-Cola Co has misled consumers over its marketing of Minute Maid pomegranate blueberry juice."

Under the Minute Maid brand Coca-Cola Company is selling a blended juice it markets as pomegranate blueberry juice. The rub is it contains only 0.3 and 0.2 percent of pomegranate and blueberry juice while the rest is apple and grape juice. POM sues because its pomegranate juice is 100%.

I stopped buying fruit juice decades ago when I realized a lot of the blend juice contains mostly apple juice and very little of the other fruits the product promote. More important, fruits lost most of the benefits when made into a packaged juice and the fruit sugar becomes like refined sugar.

A reader's tongue and cheek comment: "From the people who brought us "the real thing" and the country where lobbying managed to get pizza classified as a vegetable. FDA should stand for Food & Drink Adulterated"