Vegan MoFo Orange Week – Fun with Fruit

Good day, blogosphere!  [Disclaimer: I have pre-scheduled this post for Saturday, September 14, which also happens to be Yom Kippur.  Since I will not be eating, I also will not be checking in with food blogs, so if you leave me a comment and I don’t respond right away, I’m not ignoring you!  I’m just hungry.]

There are so many lovely orange fruits out there–mangoes, papayas, persimmons, apricots, and of course oranges!  Today I will be discussing oranges and peaches.

You may think that peaches are yellow (or even red, because of their skin!), but today I’m calling them orange. And this chart backs me up!

[Source]

Besides, I said I had a MoFo theme, but I never said there would be any science to it. 🙂

Anyway.  Beautiful orangey oranges!

Orange Slices

I love raw orange slices for breakfast or a pre-workout snack.  There is also nothing quite like fresh-squeezed orange juice, served as a side with breakfast or used as the base for a fruity smoothie.

This week I came up with another fun use for orange juice–Creamsicle Frozen Yogurt Pops!

Yield: 6 pops (my mold only holds 4 but there was definitely enough yogurt for 6! I know because I ate the excess for dessert :))
Time: 5-10 minutes (depending on how long it takes you to juice!)

You Need:
Juice of 2 navel oranges (mine yielded a generous 3/4 cup of juice)
1 pint of plain So Delicious coconut milk yogurt, or other non-dairy yogurt of choice
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract (omit if using vanilla-flavored yogurt)

To Make:
Add ingredients to a blender and blend until well-combined. OR: add ingredients to a deep bowl and blend using an immersion blender until well-combined.  Fill popsicle molds with mixture and freeze overnight or until solid.  It’s that easy!

Note: the orange flavor of these is fairly muted.  You could amp it up by adding the juice of an additional orange.  This would also make the texture of the pops slightly more icy and less creamy.

My popsicle molds have a little built-in straw on the side through which you can supposedly sip up leftover popsicle meltiness.  I usually eat mine too quickly for there to be much melting though.

Moving on…

Peaches and orange together also make a lovely pairing.  The tart citrusy taste of the orange works so well with the smooth sweetness of the peach.  I blogged recently about the Summer Orchard Bruschetta from Happy. Healthy. Life. (click for recipe) that I made for our softball team’s end-of-season barbecue.  Seriously, try this recipe before the last of 2013’s peaches are gone!

I also love these flavors blended together into a Peach-Orange Smoothie.

This one contained 1 cup of orange juice, 1 fresh peach, 1 frozen banana, and 1 tbsp of hemp seeds.  It was SO refreshing and energizing.

[I tried (with minimal success) to photograph this smoothie without the stupid BarBri logo getting in the way.  While I normally try to avoid all reminders of the bar exam, I can’t help that I really like their smoothie cup!]

And here’s a yummy peach recipe for you, which I call Peaches ‘n’ Cream Overnight Oats:

To make this, I followed the recipe for Overnight Strawberry Banana Bread Oatmeal by Synthia from Cookies to Kale (click for original recipe), but I subbed chopped peaches for the strawberries, and used coconut-almond milk instead of water for extra creaminess.  This is a very filling breakfast!

Alright, back to starving.