Great Tasting Fruit Smoothies with Cucumbers

I just love free books on the Kindle Fire. Yesterday I got an email from Pixel of Ink, a website that highlights free or inexpensive books available on the Kindle. One of the books they highlighted was Vegetarian Super Snacks. It was free yesterday, today it is still a good deal at $2.99 or free to borrow for Kindle Prime Members. I swiped (the new version of thumbed) through the book and found an interesting recipe for a blueberry and cucumber smoothie. Seeing how both my sister-in-law and I are growing LOTS of cucumbers, this interested me.

Today we tried the recipe, it was light and refreshing, perfect for the summer. We made one minor change, we used kefir instead of yogurt.

It was simple; one cup of blueberries, 2 cucumbers, a little lemon, yogurt and a little honey. That's it. I will say it makes a lot. If you have a family, this recipe is perfect. If it is just you and your cat, you might want to scale back the portions.

Fresh cucumbers from my SIL garden

Cucumbers, blueberries, honey, kefir, lemon

We used a Vitamix but any blender would work.

Nearly blended.

No spec of cucumber is visible.

Look at how smooth the smoothie looks!

By the time I got back to my house in big D I was hungry so I pulled out the magic bullet and used half a cucumber, some misc frozen fruit and some almond milk. This was also very tasty and one of the great things about a magic bullet is the single sized portion. I always seem to make too much when I use the blender and I never seem to be able to get Ginger to eat any smoothie.

So either way, whether you follow a specific recipe or wing it and throw some cucumber in with a bunch of fruit, it makes for a delicious, light and refreshing smoothie!

Stewed okra using fresh okra and tomatoes, yum!

I'm staying with my brother and sister-in-law for a few days and they have a beautiful garden full of cucumbers, tomato, okra, corn, pumpkin, beans and cantaloupe. The okra are particularly prolific. I had cut off about 4 or 5 in the morning and by dinner time there were 4 or 5 more to cut off. We had a bounty of okra an a few tomatoes; a dinner plan was forming.

I found a recipe for stewed okra using fresh okra and canned diced tomatoes on the blog, Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. Since we had fresh tomatoes that needed to be used, I cooked them for about 15-20 minutes, added a little water and spices and let the tomatoes cook down. Here is a picture of the stewed tomatoes.

Here is what the okra looked like fresh.

Fresh okra cut and ready to cook

I added the okra to the sauteed onions and cooked them for a few minutes. It was amazing, the RED okra turned GREEN! It was like magic, first they were red and then they slowing turned a typical okra green.

Okra uncooked

Okra after it has been cooking for a few minutes

 Once the okra was cooked I added the stewed tomatoes and cooked a little longer. And there you have it, stewed okra with fresh okra and fresh tomatoes. We decided to use up some pasta too and just threw it all together, results below.

Stewed okra and pasta