This recipe comes with a warning!
It all started simply enough, with me thinking that making frozen yogurt = sticking a container of yogurt in the freezer for 30 minutes and voila- instant homemade Baskin Robbins.
Turned out there’s a leeetle more to it than that.
First of all, you may need a machine. I don’t have one, and I imagined that this wouldn’t be a problem when I came across this recipe. Well, up to a point this actually does end up looking and tasting like real frozen yogurt. However, that is the point where you should eat it. All of it. Don’t leave any overnight in the freezer.
Why? It kind of hardens up into a big block of pink ice.
Still, the dish I devoured while it was still nice and creamy was absolutely delicious. So make it (and eat the whole thing because you’ll feel guilty if you leave any of it to ici-fy in the freezer). Sorry, I know how difficult it will be to eat a whole batch of cold, refreshing, velvety, tasty, strawberry-ful frozen yogurt.
Adapted from Poor Girl Eats Well
Ingredients:
2 cups strawberries
1/2 c sugar
1 T lemon juice
1/2 c nonfat milk
2 c strawberry yogurt
1 tspn vanilla (optional)
Grab your strawberries and try not to eat too many before you start chopping them.
Combine the strawberries, sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan. Bring to a low boil and simmer gently for about 5 minutes.
When the mixture looks like jam, remove it from heat and let aside to cool.
Whisk milk and yogurt together.
Add cooled strawberry mixture to yogurt and milk and mix gently.
Put mixture in a metal pan and freeze for 45 minutes. It’ll look like this:
Remove pan from freezer and mix the icy parts from the edges with the soft centre until smooth.
Put in the freezer again for another 30 minutes. Keep doing this every 30 minutes for up to 2 hours.
This is the point I told you about at which you eat, eat and eat.
Theoretically, if you let your icy block of yogurt soften a bit after taking it out of the freezer it would probably look like this again.
But don’t take any chances, just eat the whole thing now.
Summer in Egypt= Cold Watermelon.
Egyptians (Or at least my family. And Ismail’s family. And my uncle’s family. Also our next door neighbours in Alexandria) have a huge obsession with watermelon. Once the big green balls start appearing at every supermarket, fruit and vegetable stall and donkey drawn cart in the street it’s like Santa has come to town.
I visit my mother and she serves watermelon for (or should I say instead of) dessert. I pop upstairs to see my in-laws and find them gnawing on watermelon chunks. I have lunch at a friend’s house and out come the watermelon slices as soon as we finish eating.
Then we spend the rest of the visit discussing how red/sweet/ripe/under-ripe /tasty/bland the watermelon of the day is. Sometimes we even reminiscence about the previous week’s watermelon and talk about how much better/worse this one is than that one.
By the time September comes around, I can get literally sick if I just hear the word “watermelon”.
Jeez, I’ve been yakking for 5 minutes about how much we tend to yak about watermelons. I need to shut up now.
Ok, long story short. It’s still May. I’m not sick of watermelon yet. I saw this technique on how to cut a whole melon into ready-to-eat cubes over at Our Best Bites and loved it.
And Our Best Bites is my favourite (and first!) cooking blog of all time.
I will definitely be shutting up now.
Copied from Our Best Bites
Ingredients:
One juicy watermelon (yup, that’s all you’ll need 
)
Supposedly some people can tell whether a watermelon is ripe just by tapping on it and listening for the hollow sound that means it’s ripe. Ripe melons also have yellow bottoms (I think). Ok, you got me. I never buy watermelons (Reasons? Read my intro again).
Wash it first. Then stick the tip of the knife in its middle and start cutting it into two halves.
Now cut it again into quarters.
Take one quarter.
Slice it vertically along the rind. Like this:
Now carefully just with the tip of the knife, make horizontal cuts like so:
Repeat this on the other side.
Here comes the fun part. Slice so as to separate the flesh from the rind.
You’ll get cute little cubes that look like this:
There you go, a plateful of perfectly cubed watermelon.
Note to Ismail: Yes, I removed the seeds from my own watermelon cubes, but that does not mean that I will do the same to the other one hundred and twenty six watermelon cubes in the fridge.
Do you really, really, really, really, really like broccoli? Do you often wish you could live in a giant broccoli shaped house made out of millions of little broccoli flowerettes? Would you rather starve to death than never eat broccoli again?
If you answered “No” to any of the above questions, then this recipe is probably not for you. Or me.
My husband claims that he liked this soup, but when I took a little sip I felt it to be too broccoli-y and a bit bland which is why I improvised and added some extra stuff at the end.
Anyway, if it seems that I’m kind of telling you not to make this recipe, that’s because I personally didn’t love it. However Ismail, whose middle name is I-will-eat-anything, liked it. So maybe you will too.
If you don’t, please don’t send an angry note with the leftovers to my house.
Recipe adapted from Allrecipes
Ingredients
500 grams (1 pound) broccoli
1 Tblespn oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 potato, peeled and chopped
4 cups broth (I used 4 cups of water and a bouillon cube)
salt and pepper to taste
Soy sauce, sweet chilli sauce, garlic powder, paprika, sugar (my additions)
Wash your broccoli.
Chop it up. I didn’t add the stems because I heard they didn’t soften up enough to make a smooth soup.
You’ll need a small baking potato to give the soup that creamy texture without adding any cream (healthy tip!).
Chop the onion and garlic finely and sauté in a tablespoon of oil until translucent.
Add the broccoli and potatoes.
Add the water.
…and bouillon.
Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until vegetables are tender.
Wait until warm and puree in the blender (sorry, I forgot to take a picture), then bring back to the pot.
Now add a tablespoon of soy sauce and a dash of chilli sauce. Taste. Add more if it still tastes too bland.
Add sugar, S&P and spices according to taste.
Enjoy a warm bowl of your creation, you strange broccoli loving people.
As far as I know this is common knowledge, something you all already know and have been doing for years and years and are now thinking, “Why does she think we need someone to tell us this? Duh!”
However, I’m sure that somewhere there’s someone who always buys a ton of carrots on Sunday only to throw them all out by Monday because they’ve gone all mushy and brown and yucky (Excuse the vocabulary. I’ve been hanging out with my 3 year old nephews a little too much lately).
So for the sake of this one very pissed off carrot lover out there, I dedicate this post that will help them keep their favourite veggie almost-fresh for up to two- yes, TWO- weeks!
I admit I’ve kept them even longer than that 
At this point I’d like to give a shout out to my granny who told me about this little trick.
Ingredients:
Carrots!
You will also need some fridge bags and a straw.
Here’s the thing. Carrots go bad so quickly when they’re not peeled. I have no idea why.
So to keep them hard and crunchy for longer, you just need to peel ‘em! How simple is that?
Wash them first though.
Now peel them.
And chop off the fronts and ends too.
There.
Put every couple of carrots in a plastic bag.
I’m not sure if this makes a difference, but I’m sure that getting most of the air out of the bag before I close it is good for locking in the veggies’ freshness.
This is what I do (I heard this somewhere before but I don’t remember where). I stick a straw through the opening of the bag, suck the air out and then quickly twist it closed.
Now you’ll have crunchy carrots for a pretty long time.
It’s an added bonus that you can just grab and chop anytime you need them without having to go through the whole peeling thing over and over.
Wish it worked for other veggies 
