Berry Nice Morning.

With ice cream dollop.
Without ice ceam dollop.

I'm gonna let two grad parties slide [too many pictures]... and instead talk about berry pancakes and smoothies. Yesterday morning, my brother and I went to JM's house to make some berry smoothies for breakfast and watch the movie 21. We brought along a lot of raspberries, some gooseberries, and a few blueberries from our yard. JM has this mulberry tree, so the smoothies we made ended up being berry berryful. Actually, I can't really take credit for what JM's sister and my brother made, with milk and ice and berries. Oh, and maple ice cream, once we realised that the smoothie tasted way too sour without a shot of sugar.

JM and I, on the other hand, made some berry pancakes with the leftovers. We used this flat-pancake recipe but omitted the baking powder because apparently last time, the pancakes had turned out sour. JM actually has a griddle! GRIDDLES ARE AMAZING! Although I never butter or oil the pan when making pancakes, JM does. I personally didn't see much of a difference...

The only problem with not having some sort of raising agent was that they tasted more like crepes, and the berries had to be flattened in order to actually get something that looked uniformly flat. Actually, we had dumped in too many berries in the first place, and there proberry ["probably"] was more berry than batter. I liked that they weren't sweet, though.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning :)

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush...

This morning, I got back from my blood test and decided to have some mulberry yoghurt. My friend JM has a mulberry tree in her yard, and she's been feeding us with A LOT of mulberries, which has been awesome since I have never had mulberries before. They're these tiny [as in, Centrum sized] berries that look like mini blackberries, but taste completely different. For one thing, they're not very sweet, and the texture is smooth, save the grittiness because of the puny seeds. My mum added some sugar to the mulberries to stop them from getting mouldy [after all, these are pretty wild mulberries. They aren't cultivated].

This was definitely a change from the typical strawberry or blueberry yoghurt. I'm not even that fond of strawberry yoghurt.

Anyway, now I'm consuming dried jujube berries [red dates, hong zao], because my mum says that they have a "high iron content" [well, not entirely true], which would help replenish my lost blood today. There's also a lot of vitamin C, of which I wouldn't mind having 400% the daily value, since I want to be extra protected against colds or illness, especially as I have Graves' Disease. I remember during the last few weeks of October, during college applications [2 E.A. and 1 E.D.], I basically consumed over 800% of my daily vitamin C every single day in the form of citrus, Centrum, granola bars/cereals, and Zipfizz [I don't know why my mum bought so much Zipfizz, way back]. That, coupled with a ton of caffeine, made my hands shake uncontrollably, and I felt exhausted and irritable. Luckily, I don't have to go through that again... until college...

My doctor told me to cut caffeine down, though, since I have Graves' Disease.