Homemade Fruit Popsicles

Makes 4 popsicles

Ingredients:

1. Some cut fruits such as
- 2 strawberries sliced in half

- 8 blueberries

- 4 raspberries

- 4 pieces of bite size pineapple

- 4 pieces of bite size kiwi

- 4 pieces of bite size orange

2. 2 apples for juicing

Directions:

1. Cut some fruits into bite size (i.e. strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, green grapes. kiwi, red grapes, orange, pineapple, mango, peach, etc.)

2. Juice 2 apples in a juicer.

3. Place cut fruits into the popsicle molds.

4. Pour in apple juice just enough to cover the fruits.

5. Insert the popsicle sticks and freeze overnight or until it turned into popsicle, approx. 6 hours.

Additional Information:

Baby FECS is taking her nap. It is a public holiday today. Our Little FECS asked to do an activity. I prepared this activity the night before. I adapted the recipe from here http://www.marthastewart.com/357265/fruit-salad-ice-pops

Instead of using store-bought fruit juice, I prefer to use homemade apple juice. If you prefer it to be sweeter, you can add honey to the apple juice to sweeten it. If I don't have the time to make my own apple juice, I will just use honey water, as that will still be healthier than store-bought juice

To make it look good, think of using colorful fruits. I used pine apple here, but if you don't have the time to cut the whole pineapple, you can use fruit that require minimum cutting such as green grapes, blueberries, raspberries and peach.

You can also make this for birthdays :-)

References:

http://www.marthastewart.com/357265/fruit-salad-ice-pops

Apple, Beetroot, Spinach & Kale Juice

Serves 4 glasses (2 litres)

Ingredients:

1. 2 large beetroot
2. 4 apples peeled and cut
3. 4 oranges peeled and cut
4. 4 pears cut
5. 4 kiwi peeled and cut
6. 200g spinach
7. 200g kale

Directions:

Just juice them in a juicer, pour into glass and serve :-)

Additional Information:

My mum is here to visit us and stay with us for 3 months :-) So I have fulfilled my dream of juicing for my mum today using our favorite Hurom juicer :-) My mum said pa didn't get to try it. He couldn't chew much then, so this will be very good - a vitamin bomb that he could chew. Whey didn't I thought of it them... A few years ago, we had our old Phillips juicer, that was not efficient at all - using lots of fruits and only produced a little juice. It had stayed as a white elephant in our cabinet for years. Sigh... if only I have gotten to know Hurom juicer earlier and we have managed to do that for him...

I got the glasses from HW Hjørnet for 10 DKK each.

Cucumber, Lime & Apple Juice

Serves 3 tall glasses

Ingredients:

1. 2 cucumbers sliced into sticks

2. 2 apples sliced

3. 2 limes peeled and cut

4. 2 kiwis peeled and sliced (optional)

5. 1 packet (20g) mint leaves

Directions: 

Blend together in a cold-pressed juicer and serve :-)

Additional Information:

We saw this in a TV program 2 days ago and decided to try it yesterday. I made this for a friend who visited us yesterday. J was away at the school camp, leaving Mr. FECS and me. I made this for our coach time, where we watched a movie together :-) This juice is like the Mohito cocktail, just without the alcohol.

The original recipe calls for syrup. However, I substituted it with 2 apples to sweeten the drink.

Strawberry Popsicle

Makes 9 popsicles

Ingredients:

1. 2 apples sliced
2. 2 oranges sliced
3. A handful of strawberries
4. 1 tsp of sugar, honey or maple syrup (optional)

Directions:

1. Juice out the above fruits using a cold-pressed juicer (we use Hurom fine filter setting for juice)
2. Pour into Popsicle mold.
3. Freeze in freezer overnight or until it turn into ice.

Additional Information:

It was J's idea to freeze orange juice with ice-cube mold. Then I built on it - making Popsicles with fruit juice.

We didn't get to go to church today. The road was blocked for Marathon, and I could not drive out. So we made this today.

I have bought the LEGO popsicle mold from Legoland a few years ago, when J was still very very young and never got to use it, since I don't see a pressing need to introduce ice-cream to him. So this is the very first time it made its maiden's debut :-)

This is a very healthy way to eat ice-cream - no artificial favoring, all from real fruit using real strawberries and raspberries for favoring. You can sweeten it with sugar, but it is sweet enough for us.

It is another way of enjoying healthy and nutritious juicing :-)

We only have 3 popsicle molds, so we drank the rest of the fruit juice instead.

6 May 2016 (7Y2M1D): J wanted to make more fruit popsicle today. We made it in the morning and froze it ready for this evening.

6 May 2016 (7Y2M1D): Eating homemade popsicle with po po.

Orange, Carrot & Spinach Juice

Serves 3 tall glasses

Ingredients:

1. 3 carrots peeled and cut
2. 3 oranges peeled and cut
3. 100g raw baby spinach
4. 3 kiwi peeled and cut (optional, since we would like to use up)

Directions:

Just juice them in a juicer, pour into glass and serve :-)

Additional Information:

We made this for our Family Time this evening. In this concoction, we used 1 carrot each and 1 orange each for the three of us, thus fully covering the daily recommended intake for vitamin A and vitamin C - see link below:

http://www.familyfecs.com/2016/04/vitamin-just-1-medium-carrot-day.html

http://www.familyfecs.com/2016/04/vitamin-c-just-1-orange-day.html

We bought the Hurom Elite Juicer HF2 in stainless steel presentation. It is also available in Amazon:

http://amzn.to/1VjdNzM

Cabbage Plus 6 Fruit juice

Makes > 1 litre

Ingredients:

1. 3 red apples
2. 1 red pepper bell cut into sticks
3. 1 orange peeled and cut
4. 3 large carrots cut into sticks
5. 3 kiwis sliced
6. A handful of baby spinach (approx. 200g)
7. A handful of purple cabbage

Directions:

1. Juice alternate between cabbage, baby spinach, carrot, red pepper bell, orange, kiwi and apple.

Additional Information:

Notice the color of the rainbow in terms of ingredients used? 3 carrots fully cover each of our vitamin A need. 3 Kiwis fully cover our vitamin C need.

These amount of ingredients yielded > 1 lire juice, but the color is not very attractive, although it tasted very sweet and good. 

We use Hurom juicer and we really love our juicer. It is really efficient and easy to wash and clean at the same time.

Hurom juicer comes with 2 filter, a coarser one for smoothie and a fine one for juice. We used the coarser filter for smoothie, to allow more pulp to go through as we would like to get more fiber. If you prefer your juice without pulp, use the fine filter for juice, when juicing.

We bought the Hurom Elite Juicer HF2 in stainless steel presentation. It is also available in Amazon:

http://amzn.to/1VjdNzM

Juicing cabbage

Juicing baby spinach

Juicing carrots

Juicing red pepper bell

Juicing kiwis

Juicing orange

Juicing apples

The pulp... look how dry they are :-)

The vegetable and fruit juice... yield > 1 lire, but the color is not very attractive, although it tasted good. We put the juicer to setting 2 using the filter for smoothie, meaning allowing more of the pulp to go through to get more fiber. If you prefer your juice without the pulp, choose setting 1 filter for juice.

Orange, Carrot & Cabbage Juice

Serves 3 glasses

Ingredients:

1. 3 carrots peeled and cut
2. 3 oranges peeled and cut
3. A handful of purple cabage
4. A handful of raspberries (optional, since we have in the fridge that we would like to use up)

Directions:

Just juice them in a juicer, pour into glass and serve :-)

Additional Information:

Inspired by some of my friends, we started juicing vegetables such as kale and cabbage. The trick is to sweeten it with some other fruits, and it tasted heavenly :-)

It is still important to eat vegetables especially for the fiber, but we often don't eat enough of them to meet the daily recommended intake, so juicing is a good way to complete the vegetable consumption.

Hurom is a Korean cold-pressed juicer that works much more efficient than many other juicer, and is highly efficient. The pulp produced is really dry. We have thrown away our Phillips centrifuge juicer, as it doesn't extract the fruit and vegetables well, wasting a lot of our fruits, and the high heat from the centrifuge juicer oxidize the juice immediately. You could really see the difference. Thus, we are really happy with our Hurom juicer :-)

In this concoction, we used 1 carrot each and 1 orange each for the three of us, thus fully covering the daily recommended intake for vitamin A and vitamin C - see link below:

http://www.familyfecs.com/2016/04/vitamin-just-1-medium-carrot-day.html

http://www.familyfecs.com/2016/04/vitamin-c-just-1-orange-day.html

We bought the Hurom Elite Juicer HF2 in stainless steel presentation. It is also available in Amazon:

http://amzn.to/1VjdNzM

Montessori Activity: Teaching Science to Toddler with Juicing - From Solid to Liquid

Age: From 2 years old

Activity Duration: 30 minutes

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

Objective(s):
1. To teach the concept of turning solid to liquid by juicing the fruits into fruit juice.
2. To develop the 5 senses, in particular, taste.
3. To train fine motor skills.

Materials:
1. Fruits such as orange, carrot, apple, ginger, pear.
2. Electric juicer machine

Directions:
1. Show your child how to cut fruits and let him try with a butter knife.

2. Show your child how to juice the fruit into the machine.

3. Point out to your child how the solid fruit enters the hole and comes out as juice (liquid) flowing into the jug.

4. Let your child try the fruit juice.

Additional Information:
J (2Y15D) tried out juicing for the first time on 20.3.2011. It was Daddy who suggested it and he carried out the activity with J, while mommy tried to take picture. J did not like to drink fruit juice, but he really enjoyed this activity and he drank a lot after this session. He said "juice, juice" again the following Saturday, requesting us to repeat the activity. We usually restrict juice intake, as it is not good to have so much sugar, but this is a really fun and bonding activity.

In affluent Asia, households with domestic help are very common, and often activitives such as cooking and washing dishes are considered low class and being left to the maid. Children are raised like princes and princesses and many are not even allowed to enter the kitchen or wash their own cup, which in my opinion is so unfortunate, disgusting and disrespectful to maids. A generation of softies have grown up since my time. Although it can be a lot of work, besides being fun and educational, it is a very cozy and excellent bonding opportunity for the family. The return from rolling up the sleeves for such work is really worth it.