Food Fridays: Blended Fruit Smoothies & Homemade Pies

fruit smoothies

meat pies

That’s right, this week on Food Fridays, I’m going to talk about 2 dishes (would you call a drink of sorts a dish though?), so read along and be blessed by what I’m sharing- no doubt these dishes are the healthy alternative to what is being sold in the stores.

What I have found during the past few years really changed my opinion on two of the most common food and drink that I have ever eaten in my life. Fruit juices, aside from water, have most likely been probably the drink that I have consumed the most, and I can’t even count how many meat pies I have bought from Coles, Woolworths or Aldi (Four And Twenty is probably the brand I buy the most!). But I digress- ever since I discovered that home cooked pies and homemade juices are so much tastier and healthier than their supermarket counterparts, I haven’t looked back, so I will impart all that I have known here!

BLENDED FRUIT SMOOTHIES

Aside from Spreyton Tasmanian Apple juice, there’s not that much more fruit juices I buy anymore from the shops. Instead, my family and I use our new CookWell Rocket Blender to blend all kinds of fruit and veges into a smooth mixture that could taste like a drink to some, or more like paste or goo to others. But before that turns you off taking a chance, and buying a machine so that you can at least try out making some healthy types of food, let me tell you how it all goes.

Below are some pictures of a Rocket Blender and how the fruits and veges are placed in the apparatus. Nope, it’s not our Rocket Blender. In fact, though I have filmed the actual process of mum creating a few drinks from the Rocket Blender, I won’t show these videos online (any time soon, or at all), due to the wishes and respect of mum, who probably wouldn’t want herself shown online, not unless it was needed, in which case it’s not. So now that we have got that out of the way, let me tell you what you can put into the rocket blender.

rocket blender

rocket blender1

Absolutely anything. Yep. Anything at all. Even meat. Although I don’t think that will taste very well, but anyway… it’s a free country. But we have normally put fruits and veges into this contraption, such as oranges, kale, apples, carrots, beetroot, kiwi fruit, bananas, and avocado. Though we haven’t experimented with much else, our hope is to maybe add tomatoes, capsicum, berries and more, to create other exotic flavours worth experiencing.

So there you have it. Just connect the apparatus per the instructions on the blender, add as much quantities of each fruit or vegetable that you want to (and different quantities creates different flavours and colours as well!), and don’t forget to add a bit of water, so that the food can blend well and not wreck the machine. To give the drink a bit more kick, you can add spices like chilli, salt and pepper, and you can also add honey and/or yoghurt in order to sweeten the drink as well. There is no on/off switch on this apparatus, at least on the version we have, so I would stress be careful. Otherwise, create, drink and enjoy, and be amazed at how healthy you will become over the next few weeks and months!

HOMEMADE PIES

Probably even simpler to create than the drinks and smoothies I was mentioning earlier, I normally make pies with a Sunbeam Pie Maker. There are many variations of this type of appliance, and any will do. Whether the contraption can cool 4 pies at once, or 2 pies, doesn’t matter- in fact take a look at a couple of photos below of different pic making machines, as to how the pies look like when they are raw, and when they are cooked.

sunbeam pie maker

sunbeam pie maker1

So, how to make the most scrumptious pies on the planet? Well, you need to have puff pastry first, or you can make you own dough. Now I don’t really know how to make you own dough, but here’s a video below of how to create the perfect dough, from none other than Jamie Oliver. Oh, and you can also watch another video about him creating an Aussie meat pie with the dough, in the oven, instead of the pie maker. Enjoy!

If you are less adventurous in your cooking at the moment, like myself, you can defrost the puff pastry, but here’s the tricky part, you need to find two different sizes pie making circles, and create even top and bottom pie circles (just an interesting fact- Jamie Oliver doesn’t use pie circles!)- you can take a look at an example below.

pie making circles

Once you create the circles (you can make more circles by using a rolling pin for the excess puff pastry!), you can connect the Pie Maker, place the bottom pie circles into the machine, then add your cooked filling (whatever you want, either sweet or savoury, but I’m not going to limit what you can put in the pie machine though- let’s just say that I have put in chocolate, and it works!), then covered by the top pie circle. Then repeat for however many pies you want to make, then cook the pies for about 5-10 minutes as per the Pie Maker’s instructions. Afterwards, the pies will be cooked, and then you can eat and enjoy!

Now was that easy or was that easy? Let us know which ‘dish’ out of the two you enjoy the most! Now, I’m off to eat, all of this is making me hungry!

3 thoughts on “Food Fridays: Blended Fruit Smoothies & Homemade Pies”

  1. Good post. I love the homemade pies my Mom bakes, especially Shepherds pie 🙂 And for the juice, we have a Nutribullet. It can blend anything, and it makes some great smoothies.
    God bless!

    1. Cool, does the Nutribullet do a similar thing? How smooth is the juice, as the Rocket Blender is a little bit more ‘pulpy’ and has more fruit flesh in it, if you know what I mean (but the drinks are still tasty!)…

      1. It basically does the same thing, but it grinds the fruit to nearly liquid. You add yogurt and it all depends on how long to run it. The longer you blend the smoother it will be. I haven’t found a pulpy bit in it yet, so I highly recommend it!

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