Creamy Blood Orange & Berry Smoothie {vegan}

Nature is most surprising. At a time when nothing much is ready to eat in the spring garden (at least here in the UK), some of the brightest, most nutritious fruits are at their peak. Throughout the bleak winter months, with root crops and cold-stored orchard fruits doing their best to sustain us, citrus is one of two bright spots, the other being pomegranates. A bowl of these bold and voluptuous fruits on the coffee table not only cheers, it restores and nourishes too.

not much anthocyanin-red left, but still juicy & delicious!

And now, just past the March midpoint, with spring warmth looming tantalisingly close, Spanish imports of oranges are still plentiful and cheap. All eating oranges are pretty special, but the jewels in the citrus crown are sparkling, fragrant blood oranges, with the lustiest specimens coming from their native Italy. Be quick though, they will be gone before you know it. To be honest, the best ones, picked when the winter chill has done the necessary task of producing the characteristic blood-red pigment (cancer-fighting anthocyanins), are perhaps gone as warmer weather lessens the visual and unique nutritional content. But what can still be plucked from shops and savvy markets are still worth buying.

I am buying blood oranges every few days, boxing and coxing between supermarket and small corner shop, playing a happy roulette: will that mottled ruby flesh reveal a crimson, dripping interior or standard – but still beautiful – orange? Other than the arresting colour, it is the surprising overtones – not even hint: actual overtones – of ripe raspberries. Irresistible. Utterly irresistible. Get them while you can. Or, if you are in the US, California provides your blood orange fix from May to November. You lucky so and so’s. ;-)

frozen blood orange – phone snap

Oh, before I give you the recipe I must pass on a little tip I chanced on by accident. For some unknown reason I put a blood orange in the freezer. I found it a couple of days later, peeled it (easy peasy) and breeched the chilled flesh with a tentative bite. Oh. My. Goodness. Instant sorbet! The little vesicles of juice in each segment meld into one another to produce a uniform texture that mimics churned sorbet. Try it for yourself. Move over frozen grapes, there’s a new healthy frozen treat in town! At least for a few more weeks. Gah, I will be sad to see blood oranges go.

Do you love blood oranges too? Have you done anything special with them?

blood-orange-berry-smoothie // food to glow

phone snap

Creamy Blood Orange Smoothie

Servings: 2
Difficulty: easy
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The fruit powder, carrots, hemp seeds and bee pollen are all extras, but well worth adding for a unique taste as well as nutrition boost to this already uber-nutritious breakfast smoothie. It is especially worth noting that the betacarotene in the carrots and the anthocyanins in the berries and blood oranges may help to protect cells even more than these compounds do on their own.

What I would say is necessary is to use either a frozen banana or frozen berries (or both): adding ice to smoothies is a last-resort kind of thing, imo.

You can freeze this creamy, dreamy drink to make a gorgeous dessert, too.

1 small banana (frozen if you like)

2 small/1 large carrot, cut into chunks

2 blood oranges

100g/1 heaped cup of (frozen) berries – I used brambles and raspberries I picked last summer near my house

2 tsp bee pollen, optional for vegans

2 tbsp hemp seeds (leave out if you don’t have a powerful blender like my Froothie, or a Vitamix)

2 tsp berry powder, such as raspberry, or something like the fantastic sea buckthorn powder I recently received from Finnberry

4 heaped tbsp kefir or unsweetened live yogurt of choice (here’s a vegan kefir recipe that is great)

400ml/ 1 & 2/3 cups milk of choice (I use almond milk)

sweetener to taste, if needed (I sometimes add a teaspoon of local Scottish heather honey, which seems to have similar properties to manuka honey, although with a caveat. But I just love it for the taste)

1. Peel and cut up the oranges, removing any seeds. Pop everything into a high-powered blender until creamy-smooth. Top with extra hemp seeds and bee pollen if you like. Enjoy!