Summer ‘drinks’: banana mango ice, and the Look What I Made meme

This is pretty much a non-recipe as it is so simple. Recently I have been very drawn to recipes that only take a few ingredients (I think this may be from reading a lot of Nigel Slater!). So today, when after work when I wanted a healthy snack, I did a twist on banana ice. Banana ice is an idea I got a few years ago from Rose Elliot's Vegetarian Express book. Basically if you freeze cut-up bananas and then blitz them up in a blender they become ice-cream like. It sounds a little wacky but truly it is a handy idea. Also a good thing when having a healthy week! From the list of ingredients you can see it is gluten free, dairy free, vegan etc. Of course, as with all simple recipes, it will only be as good as these few ingredients are, so a ripe mango and nice banana are important.

Recipe:
1 frozen cut-up banana
1 mango chopped
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

(a strawberry for decoration)

Blitz it all up in a blender and you have a very tasty snack or desert. If you wanted more of a drink add a splash of apple juice to the blender. Very refreshing!

Yay it's meme time….

I have been tagged with a very cool meme by Emily. It is to list 2-5 recipes that you have cooked from other peoples blogs, well I do that a fair bit. Also searching about in my archives I notice that, as well as following specific recipes, blogs are also a great way of getting general ideas on food, trends, and cooking processes. Here are three things that stand out in my memory as things I have cooked with great success from blogs:

1. Chocolate Intensity from Alpineberry
Fantastic! I seem to remember I did this for my sister's birthday. I kept it as one big glazed cake as that is more birthday like. I made the creme anglaise too. Wonderful. Also it is gluten free which is important in my family. A real show stopper.

2. Busy-Day Cake from Orangette
The start of that blog post is quite eye-popping, no? :) Well I made this for a mother's day meal (that is the UK mother's day which was back in March). Really simple yet delicious. I also made a simple little hot berry sauce by heating some mixed berries, and I served it all with a dollop of tart full-fat Greek yogurt.

3. Mini Bagels from Delicious Days
These were so fun to make! I made them a few times. When I am off my health kick I will give these a go again. Mini things are great because you can try a few different toppings.

This meme reminds me that I must catch up on my food-blog reading. Food blogs are so full of inspiration, it is like a never ending cookery book. There are so many out there that I bet there is one for everyone's taste. This is one of my favourites because the writing is so good; Tea and Cookies.

Right, now on to the tricky subject of whom to tag back, as I am behind on my blog-reading I am not sure who has done this or not, so I say, if you have read this far YOU'RE TAGGED! Let me know if you do it, this is an interesting meme that is showing up a lot of good recipes.