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.

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.

The Humble Pear/Pære/梨[Lí]

For babies from 4 months, but I prefer to serve it from 7.5 months, after all the other vegetables are introduced.

If there is only one single sweet thing I would choose to introduce to J, it would be the pear.

A very ripe pear is very soft (thus reducing choking risk), very sweet (especially the Dutch species) and can be eaten raw without cooking by babies more than 6 months old. For babies with a sweet tooth, it is a perfect natural sweetener to dessert for babies, when pears are blended in.

Directions:
1. Mash ½ ripe and soft pear with fork and serve

Nutritional Value:
Pears are a good source of vitamin C and copper. Both of these nutrients can be thought of as antioxidant nutrients that help protect cells in the body from oxygen-related damage due to free radicals.

Vitamin C functions as an antioxidant in all water-soluble areas of the body, and in addition to its antioxidant activity, is critical for good immune function. Vitamin C stimulates white cells to fight infection, directly kills many bacteria and viruses, and regenerates Vitamin E (an antioxidant that protects fat-soluble areas of the body) after it has been inactivated by disarming free radicals.

Copper helps protect the body from free radical damage as a necessary component of superoxide dismutase (SOD), a copper-dependent enzyme that eliminates superoxide radicals. Superoxide radicals are a type of free radical generated during normal metabolism, as well as when white blood cells attack invading bacteria and viruses. If not eliminated quickly, superoxide radicals damage cell membranes.

IMPORTANT Note:
If you choose to wean your baby before 6 months of age, and wish to serve pears, you need to cook the pears by boiling or steaming before mashing it. I am lazy, and thus I prefer to serve it after 6 months.

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Additional Comments:
The pear on the left is a Chinese pear. It is rounder and shorter. The pear on the right is an European pear. It is taller and slimmer. Chinese pears tend to be harder, and European pears tend to be softer and sweeter.

References:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=28