Healthy Nigerian Drinks for the new year.
We have all satisfied our guilty pleasures in the last week of 2014. Heavy bowls of Jollof rice, cakes, ice cream, sweets, chocolate, the list is endless.Now is the time to ‘repent’ of our ‘sins’. My church has declared a fourteen days fasting and prayer so I have keyed into this for both the spiritual and physical benefit. Well for those of you not into the fasting thing it makes a lot of sense to take it easy on the digestive system and start the year on a healthy note and who knows it might just become a habit… I just include this as a prayer point for all my followers.
As part of the New year resolution I will advise to include Healthy Nigerian drinks in your diet through the week , it is a smart thing to do .
I have provided interesting choices and combinations using regular fruits you find in neighbourhood fruit markets. These include grape fruit, watermelon, oranges , dry zobo leaves and soursop. Zobo is parked with antioxidants and vitamin C just what you need at this time of the year to fight the colds and coughs and generally boost your body defence against infections.Grape fruits contain beneficial compounds to help burn calories whilst Water Melon is a great diuretic. Soursop has been severally acclaimed to have beneficial compounds that help to heal damaged cells. Besides all of these health benefits,fruits just taste great. There is so much we can create with Nigerian foods and this is what I am offering to you . Ugu is appearing on the list because of its high iron content.
So what is stopping you from getting started? Just get a food blender or juicer, some bottled water , wash your fruits very well and get juicing away. Do you have other healthy smoothies or drinks to share with me? I wish you a Happy New Year
Recipe for making Healthy Nigerian Drinks?
How to make Aromatic Zobo Drink?
1 cup Zobo drink + 1/2 tsp Ginger powder+ 1/2 tsp Cloves powder+ 1 tsp Honey
Simply boil water, rinse zobo leaves twice in cold water to remove dust and sand.
Place in a plastic container and add the boiling water.
Allow to steep for about 10 minutes strain and you zobo drink is ready.
Mix ginger and cloves in the zobo, strain and sweeten with honey and chill. Enjoy you drink.
How to make Grape Fruit juice?
Just squeeze out as much juice and pulp as possible in the grape fruits. Chill and enjoy.
How to make Watermelon/ Soursop smoothie?
Blend 1/2 cup water melon pulp and mix with blende 1/2 cup Soursop.
To make soursop smoothie? Wash the outside of the fruit thoroughly, using your hand split open the fruit, separate the white fruit pulp from the seeds. Blend 1/2 cup of soursop with about 4 tbsp water.
How to make Ugu/Soursop smoothie?
Blend 1/2 cup chopped Ugu with 3/4 cup Soursop. Squeeze on some orange juice and enjoy!
Thanks dear for this share. I just wish to add that if you want to lower blood pressure then the zobo drink should be prepared with cold water. If you want to raise the blood pressure then you prepare it with hot or boiled water. I only got to learn this a few weeks ago and I thought I should share it with as many as possible so we don’t work against what we want to achieve.
Hello Stella , thank you so much for the input. If I will not be asking too much when this post is up on the face book page later this morning kindly make this comment so others can share also . I might also make it on your behalf if you are not following on my fan page. Thanks for following my blog.
Great tip dr Stella
Happy new year Mama and thank you for this new year tips. What a good way to start the new year.
Hello Obi, Happy New Year. I hope you and the family get to try the drinks.
what is the rational behind using hot or cold water when for zobo?
Hello Dorothy, it is to get out as much of the flavour of the drink as possible. Same way you use hot water for tea.yes cold water gets out some of the drink in case of zobo but hot water does much more