Homemade Strawberry Milk

Seeing how well my Homemade Walnut Milk went, I decided to make my own Strawberry Milk too, using real strawberries!!!

Ingredients:

1 cup of strawberries (fresh or frozen is fine)

- 1/2 cup of sugar

- 1 cup of water

- 4 cups of milk

How To:

1. Wash and dice the strawberries

Tip: soak the strawberries into salt water for 2 minutes to help get rid of the dirty stuff

2. Put the diced strawberries, sugar, and water into a pot, and boil for 10-15 minutes.

3. Pour the strawberry syrup into a container using a sieve or mesh bag (I reused the soup bag that I bought for making my walnut milk), and squeeze out the juice.

4. Voila! There, you'll have your strawberry syrup! You can save the cooked strawberries to add to yoghurt or put on pancakes!

5. Fill 3/4 of a cup of milk, and fill the rest of the cup with your strawberry syrup. How much you add is entirely up to you!

6. Voila! There you have made your homemade strawberry milk!

You can put it in the fridge for up to 3 days!

Now, wasn't that easy? It tastes delicious too!! I wonder if I can try making it with other fruits too? :p

Thank you for reading, and if you have any questions, please comment below!

Have a nice day!!

Homemade Walnut Milk

I used to love drinking milk when I was living in New Zealand - the fresh milk there tastes sooooo good!!! As I grew older, I became lactose intolerant and would have tummy cramps and diarrhoea after drinking milk, and that is when I started finding substitutes, including lactose intolerant milk, soy milk, and even rice milk. Recently, I saw almond milk drinks selling at the supermarket, so I bought a carton to try, and it tasted pretty good...that was when I decided to make my own, but with walnuts instead!

Milk is very nutritious especially for pregnant women, and although nut milks aren't even half as nutritious as cow's milk, nut milks do make a good substitute for smoothies!

Due to the small size of my blender, I made slight amendments to the recipe I saw online. My blender is only able to contain 2 cups of water each time, so I had to halve the ingredients and do the blending process twice.

Ingredients:

1 cup of raw walnuts

1 container with a lid

1 blender

4 cups filtered water

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1 nut milk bag or soup bag

1 teaspoon of sweetener or honey (optional)

1 sprinkle of cinnamon (optional)

How To:

1. Soak raw walnuts in filtered water for 8-10 hours, or just overnight in a container with a lid. If you want to soak the walnuts for longer, you need to drain the walnuts and change the water every 8-10 hours. Make sure there is at least 1 inch of water covering the walnuts.

2. After 8-10 hours of soaking, drain and rinse the soaked walnuts.

3. Place the walnuts in a blender, adding in the 4 cups of filtered water. Also add in the vanilla essence and sweetener of your choice. I also sprinkled in some cinnamon.

4. Blend all of the ingredients on high for 90 seconds. If your blender does not have speed options, blend for 120 seconds.

5. When you have finished blending, leave the milk to set for 5 minutes, so that the foam can float to the top.

6. Scoop out the foam from the top of the nut milk (sorry I forgot to take a photo of the foam).

7. Place the nut milk bag into a jar, and pour liquid into the nut milk bag, making sure you squeeze all the pulp to get all the milk. Make sure your jar has a lid!

8. Save the pulp to use in other dishes, such as hummus or fudge.

9. Voila! You have your walnut milk! You can adjust how much water you add depending on how thick you like your milk to be, and you can also try this with some other of your favourite nuts too!! You can keep your nut milk for up to 5 days in the fridge!!

Remember to give your bottle a shake before using the nut milk!!

I just used my homemade walnut milk to go with my avocado!! *yummy*

Thank you for reading, and if you have any questions, please comment below! Have a nice day!!!

Fruit Infused Water

Drinking eight glasses of water can be quite difficult, especially when you don't like the taste of plain water! A solution to this is by trying these Fruit Infused Water Drinks, a healthy alternative to sweetened drinks.

Since posting this pic onto my Facebook and Instagram, a few people have asked me how to make these drinks, so I have decided to blog on it today.

Since being pregnant, I've found it very hard to keep water down, as the bland taste of water makes me nauseas, so I've been looking for ways to change this. I remember drinking the h2go kiwifruit + a splash of strawberry flavoured water back in New Zealand, so I decided to make a natural version of them.

There are many recipes on the Internet, but I usually just use the things I have at home...today it's Strawberries and Lime. I usually use the big strawberries, but today I have the small strawberries from Korea.

I'm going to use my 350mL bottle, but I usually refill it at least once, so I do add quite a lot of strawberries compared to other recipes.

Ingredients:

- 6 x strawberries (3 strawberries if they are big in size)

- 1 x key lime

- 1 x water bottle

- drinking water

1. Wash the fruits and cut the stems off your strawberries. Leave your strawberries in salted water for 1 minute before rinsing with cooled boiled water.

2. Slice the strawberries into at least 4 slices per strawberry, and halve the lime. I prefer to take the seeds out of the key lime before putting them into my drink.

3. Put the fruits into your bottle. I put in half of the lime, but squeezed juice from the other half into my bottle.

4. Fill your bottle with cooled boiling water or any filtered water.

5. Let the bottle sit in the fridge for 2-8 hours (depending on how strong you want the flavour to be).

6. After 2 hours, I took out the lime from my bottle, but let the bottle continue to sit in the fridge. I didn't want my drink to be too sour.

7. Before serving, you can use a fork to mash the fruits inside, or you can just shake your bottle a little to mix the flavours together.

You can add any of your favourite fruits (anything except bananas), veggies, and herbs into your drink. Be creative!

I have also tried strawberries & blueberries. strawberries & orange, strawberries & kiwifruit. I find that strawberries give the most pleasant taste, but I don't recommend using blueberries unless they're cheap around where you live, because they're rather expensive in Hong Kong, but the taste is not very strong when being infused in water. If you use cold water to infuse your water, and do not soak it for too long, you can even eat the fruits you used to infuse in your drink!!

My strawberry and blueberry infused tea :)

My strawberry and orange infused water :)

Tips & Other Suggestions:

If you're adding blueberries or any fruit that has skin around it, then you need to cut the fruit up so the juice can infuse into your drink.

Instead of adding water to your drink, you can add ice or soda instead, and if you don't want to be drinking something too cold, you can just leave the bottle in room temperature for a few hours too. Just do whatever suits you!

If you find that your drink is too sour for your liking, you can also add a teaspoon of honey into your drink!! <-- personal experience

You could also puree your ingredients and then use a sieve to strain the pulp, dilute with water, and sip with a straw.

Fruit Infused Tea

You can also make Fruit Infused Teas by boiling the fruits together in water for a few minutes, or just by adding hot boiling water into the fruit and letting it to simmer for a few minutes before taking the fruits out.

You can also try these combinations:

• Cucumber & Fresh Mint
• Apple & Cinnamon Sticks
• Blueberry & Strawberry
• Orange, Cucumber, Lime & Lemon
• Lemon, Cucumber, Fresh Mint, & Fresh Strawberry
• Frozen Grapes, Frozen Strawberries, & Fresh Mint
• Watermelon, Pineapple, & Apple
• Honey Dew, Cantaloupe, & Watermelon
• Peach, Honey Dew, & Cantaloupe
• Watermelon & Peach
• Strawberry & Fresh Mint
• Fresh Mint, Fresh Lavender, & Lemon
• Peach, Strawberry, & Raspberry/Blackberry
• Kiwi, Raspberry, & Peach
• Strawberry & Orange

For more information, you can check out the following sites:

http://fruitinfusedwaters.com/

http://tonedandfit.net/2013/03/14/make-your-own-fruit-infused-water/
http://www.theyummylife.com/Flavored_Water

Hope you enjoyed reading, and be creative with your drinks!!!