This year has been an excellent year for fruit from the garden. Apples, pears, grapes and a few figs have all featured in this years bounteous crop from my tiny garden. That’s great but there is only so much fruit you can eat at a time, whether fresh or cooked in some way - apple pie is a particular favourite!

Neighbours seem reluctant to share the fruit as it isn’t ‘supermarket’ perfect. So short of adding it all to the compost I needed to find something different to do with it all. Inspired by my sons acquisition of a smoothie maker for university I set about trying to create some fruit smoothies.

Smoothies, I discovered, are quite popular, and if successful, my smoothies would be a great way of ensuring a good helping of healthy nourishment. My first efforts concentrated on just a single fruit - pears. This created a curious but lightly flavoured refreshing drink. I simply peeled and cored the fruit and blended to a fine pulp.

Encouraged I started to experiment - adding in other fruits, bananas gave a smooth, sweet texture, oranges gave a citrus tang, raspberries gave a flash of extravagant colour! WIth no added liquid these can be less than free flowing so adding in some cold green tea was ideal for increasing fluidity and adding anti-oxidants.

So if you have more fruit than you know what to do with and the freezer and neighbours are full of fruit - why not give it a go! If you have any recipes to share I’d love to hear from you.