Sugar-free, dairy-free Banana ice-cream

As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t like sugar! We don’t have it in the house and only eat it on other peoples’ special occasions! But I don’t think it’s sustainable to replace something with nothing, so I’m constantly looking for yummy healthy sweet things that my kids can enjoy, things that compete with, or even surpass sugar on a sweetness level. One thing that’s really easy to whip up is banana ‘ice-cream’. But you do need an Oscar or similar type of juicer/food processer.

Take a bunch of bananas, peel them and put them in a bag in the freezer. Don’t forget to peel them coz it’s seriously impossible to get a banana peel off a frozen banana! 

Once it’s completely frozen cut the bananas in half and press through the Oscar, using the mincing attachment. That’s it!!

Drizzle some honey over and add a sprinkle of carob, cocoa, roasted desiccated coconut, raisons or just enjoy it plain.  

It’s so yum, you’ll have to make some for you too! You can do this with any fruit, just remember to cut, peel or otherwise prep them before you freeze them. I find that banana is the closest to real ice-cream and other fruits are more like sorbet, but they’re all tasty, especially when the fruit is ripe, and it’s fun mixing them. We always have a bag of frozen fruit in the freezer, they keep for a long time and it’s a great way to make use of seasonal fruit like strawberries or mangoes long after they’ve gone out of season. And it’s an instant dessert if you have guests over, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait for a special occasion! 

The ultimate stress management!

One day, a few weeks ago, I had a mini melt down. Nothing too dire, just a little work related stress coupled with too little sleep and an upcoming event that was taking up too much space in my head. As a result I arrived home at the end of the day feeling exhausted, resentful and totally over-extended. I walked across the lawn laden with bags, baskets, grocery bags and a very tight feeling in my chest. I saw my husband in the veggie garden and yelled at him that I’d had a terribly day, and nothing is worth this, moan, groan, blah, blah, to which he replied,’ Come pick tomatoes!’.

That was his reply!

So I downed tools, in the middle of the lawn, went into the tomato cage and picked tomatoes. I looked under the fig tree that they creep up against and between all the leaves and on all the foot paths, and in my thorough search for tomatoes I managed to lose all the stress of my day. I felt my shoulders relax, my expression loosen, the tight ball in my chest dissolve. Be it the act of being amongst green things that grow, or the hunter-gatherer in me getting her fix or simply the feeling of warm soft sawdust beneath my feet, I felt completely in command of my stress levels by the time I left the vegetable garden! 
We have now coined a new phrase in our household, ‘Go pick tomatoes!’. It doesn't really mean, ’Please go pick some tomatoes’, it means, Go take a time out, go for a walk, chill, pick tomatoes, do whatever it is you need to do to get back into a calm balance within yourself! Because no matter how well you eat or how fit you are, if you operate from a space that’s easily disrupted by stress, then the cracks will start to show eventually! And I learnt that day, in between the green leaves and ripening figs and bright yellow tomatoes that I owe it to myself to take time out. 
That time-out is as valid and essential as time-in!  
That no one will do it for me.
I cannot give if I’m all emptied out and only I know what fills me up and if I need to go pick tomatoes to fill up, then that’s what I will do!
So take a time-out today, even if it's just five minutes, for you to fill up.
Go pick tomatoes!  

Kharma's Birthday... no sugar.

I don’t like sugar. At all! So it seems fitting that my first post should be about tackling my daughter’s fourteenth birthday party in a world where sweeties are synonymous with parties. But first, a little history: At the age of one and a half my daughter, Kharma, lost weight instead of gaining weight. It was scary! A little boy in her play group was experiencing similar symptoms and after a brief trip to a nutritionist, recovered almost immediately.

 I made my appointment and subsequently had my life turned on its ear! This crazy lady was telling me that my daughter was probably gluten intolerant and threw in the concept of food combining just to further complicate things! She also said small children often test inconclusively in allergy tests so the best thing to do was to exclude possible problem foods and see what happened. So off I went, clutching my list of do’s and don’ts like a ticket to another planet! Within a week she stabilized and by two was back to normal. It’s been roller coaster ride fraught with terrible recipes, inedible birthday cakes, unpalatable dips, sticky pancakes, and a veritable smorgasbord of expensive experiments. Thirteen years ago, things were very different!

We’ve come a long way since that first gluten-free birthday cake which was, once you took away the pretty name, mielie meel koek ! It was so bad, not even the dog would eat it! And there was ample to sample, since all but one kid had licked their koek clean and chucked them in the bushes! I have made great friends with dates and honey and found that when you add a teaspoon of cocoa powder to something it suddenly becomes very popular! But my daughter was having none of this, she wanted ‘normal food’, chocolate cake, mocktails. She’s had her fill, you see. She thinks I’m too radical and my husband thinks I’m not radical enough! But my son is my trusty culinary sidekick! Fully prepared to taste anything I come up with!

So this is what I was up against and here’s my menu of goodies and baddies for the day:                              

For snacks I gave them a platter of raw fruit and veg, pickles, tinned fruit and some toothpicks and the idea was to come up with the best and the worst combinations. I buy Offenau Gherkins and Rhodes tinned fruit coz the only dodge ingredient they use is sugar.

The Mocktails were hard in the beginning coz many online recipes use soft drinks and I can’t actually feed that stuff to my kids so I just made up my own using mostly fresh homemade juice, soda water, homemade coconut milk (recipes to follow!) the frozen grapes were a hit!

I waved a white flag at the birthday cake and the ice cream! Time, dedication, and budget only allow for so much! But I don’t have a white flag for preservatives; colourants etc. and my kids thankfully know to stay away from anything they can’t pronounce!

Next day we kept it simple with Super delicious greens and yellow pear tomatoes out of the garden!!  My daughter didn’t complain!