Watermelon drink

Since I made my cucumber agua fresca that day, I just can`t stop making fruit drinks in my kitchen. And when I got myself a book for smoothie recipes, I stepped up to add some vegetables in. I realized how rare I ate raw vegetables for my daily meals and I know that`s just not good. Not good for my skin! So I blend up carrot, cabbage, bell pepper, tomato, apple, blueberries, oranges, lemon, etc etc, you name it. The good thing is, I get to borrow the natural sweetness from the fruits and make the less sweet or rather bland vegetables more drinkable. I don`t usually eat raw vegetables due to their blandness at the first place. Anyway, I drink it everyday, usually twice at morning and night. Repeat: Everyday. To my surprise, not only I started to get used to the natural sweetness (although sometimes when it tastes too bland or weird, I add a bit of honey), I found the taste of the fruit and veg mix isn`t that bad for me.
Now this post is for what I`ve made last month, where I haven`t thought of mixing it with veggies. But still this drink is one of my favorites, next to eating the watermelon as it is. Watermelon is one of my biggest love affairs with food. I see it as a beautiful crunchy yet moist sponge full of refreshing sweetness. It`s just perfect. Even with the seeds in. If the seeds bother you, though, you might be better choose the seedless watermelon for this drink.

Chop up and put them in a blender

Aah..the cooling mint leaves. I never get enough of them.

Whiz up. Oh, lovely.
By the way, I didn`t need to add sugar or honey at all as this was sweet enough for me. 

And as always, I forgot something. Oranges.
Use a squeezer to get the juice (and pulp too if you want), pour it in to the blender and puree it again.

And since I didn`t take the picture after I added the orange juice, please pretend that you see a jar of watermelon puree with light orangeness. Thank you.
By the way, you can add water (or not) to your preference of thickness. Although the more water you add, the less sweet it would be, and the more sugar (or honey) you would likely add.

Say hello to this freshness. Happy slurping!

Ingredients:
Watermelon (seedless one, if necessary)
Orange juice
Mint leaves
Water (optional)
Sugar or honey (optional)

Sunflower field in Osaki

So this is where we`ve been for one of our dates in this summer. We took a motorcycle ride for 30 km to the north to get to a wide open space with green, yellow, and blue all over the place.

Sunflowers were everywhere we looked. That 1-hour long ride under the burning sun was totally payed off here.

Alright, if you were at this place, what would you do other than taking pictures like crazy? Tell me.

Not adoring these gorgeous ladies is a crime. And not taking pictures of them  is even a bigger crime.

I have no idea what I was doing there, but it is possible that I thought I could communicate with them.

Meh. Maybe not.
And fyi, I`m 156 cm tall and that`s not enough to compete with most of those flowers.

And this lil` boy just wouldn`t leave me alone.

What`s on your mind when you look at this?
Me, I want to eat it! Oh, just look at that vivid yellowness.

And here`s the last one, before going home.

And no, I didn`t eat any of them, in case you`re about to scream at me.
Hope you enjoyed the virtual trip with us!

Pineapple and cucumber in spicy light syrup

The idea of eating fruits with chili, which is my nature by the way, never fails to bring out the puzzled looks on my Japanese friends` faces whenever I mention it. It was sort of Fruits with chili?? Really?? faces. And that was when I realized how I basically grew up  and live up chewing chili with almost any kind of food. Chocolate with chili? Tried it last year. What an interesting taste!

Anyway, the fruit drink I made here is basically a lighter and partly drinkable (or slurpable) version of Indonesian fruit salad called rujak, which is a mix of cut fruits like mango, cucumber, and pineapple dressed with sweet and spicy sauce made of dark brown, chili, and tamarind. I do love rujak the way it is, but  at the moment I need to keep the thought of eating the fruits with the thick sugar paste  (aka. more sugar less water) away. After all, slurping the cold  spicy syrup (aka. more water less sugar) with occasional fruits chewing is what I am craving for these super hot days.

I only used pineapple and cucumber here, but you`re certainly welcome to experiment with your favorite fruits. Maybe next time I`ll go with apple.

So, start with pineapple. My first time dealing with fresh pineapple was just a year ago (I know!). Having to peel off its skin was my only reason for not buying pineapple. But when I found pineapples sold with a  serving guidance tagged on them, my pineaple-less days were over.

So, if you too are intimidated by the skin like I was, I hope this guidance can be handy for you. It`s in Japanese, but I`m sure you can figure it out from the pictures.

Peel off the skin and cut up the pineapple. Oh, I love this last part of the cutting process.

Next is cucumbers. After the pineapple, they come very easy to handle with. Slice them up in any shapes you like.

Mix the cut pineapple and cucumbers in a container.

Now for those of you who are new with eating fruits with chili, here comes the challenge.
Throw in sliced chili. It depends on how much you can handle the heat, but you can  certainly use much less chili than I did. I turn crazy when it comes to chili and you don`t have to be like me.
And by the way, I used dried chili because that`s what I got here. Go with fresh chili (deseed or not, depending on your heat tolerance) whenever you can because the fresh skin are soft enough to eat. The skin of the dried ones are actually a little too hard and papery to chew, so I sometimes boil them together with the syrup. And since I said sometimes, this time I just threw them in with the fruits and let the syrup soften them a bit after several hours soaking.

Because I skipped the boiling work, I used hot water to dissolve dark brown sugar in a cup.

Add this chili powder, vinegar, and a pinch of salt. If you have tamarind in hands, use the juice instead of vinegar.

Just make the syrup thick, pour it in batches to the fruits while thinning it out with water, and adjust the taste until  the fruits are completely soaked up in the container. For me, I like it to be lightly sweet but with intense heat and sourness. For a rough measurement, I added 1 tbs sliced chili, 3 tbs brown sugar, 6 tbs of vinegar, and a pinch of salt to a total volume of 750 ml fruits and water, which was my container capacity.

Add peanuts too. You can sprinkle the peanuts later when serving for a greater crunch factor, or before soaking to make them mushy. Whichever it is, please add the peanuts. Trust me.

Close the container tightly and keep it in refrigerator for several hours before serving. The longer you soak the fruits, the more they gain the taste. Ah, heaven.

Ready for the challenge?

Ingredients:

Pineapple

Cucumbers

Dark brown sugar or palm sugar

Chili

Chili powder
Vinegar or tamarind juice

Salt

Peanuts
Water