Rice 'n' Mango blend.

UPDATE: Edit at the bottom with nutritional calculations also.

I'm going to try and start measuring and calculating some blends for a while.  I'll share the results here, for your interest.  Don't forget you can submit recipes of your own, either as a comment, or email me and then I'll pop them up in the recipes section for all to see.

So here's today's blend; it's a super-simple one, some of my blends can have easily triple the ingredients in them.  Simple to make too.  Cook the rice, while that's happening or resting zip the pepitas  a couple of pulses on high (like, 2 half-second blitzes) and throw in the rest.  Assemble. Blend!

Medium-grain cooked white rice 250g (uncooked weight):  875 Cal
Pepitas (pumpkin seeds kernels) 50g:  282 cal
Kiwi fruit x 5: 250 cal
Large mango x 2: 270 cal
Coconut cream 270ml:  786 cal
Cranberry juice 750ml:  593 cal
Pepper, cardamom, water.  Ingredients organic except for kiwi, mango, cardamom.

Total volume 2.5 litres, = 10x250ml servings @302 cals each.
1.21 cal/ml
36 cal/fl oz

Right now I've just done a basic calorie count.  I aim to next use one of the online tools available to see how it comes out, and give an indication of the carb/protein/fat ratio etc.

This blend is going to be very low protein, you can tell at a glance, and a little bit high in fat with that coconut cream.  But for me the coconut oil is not a real issue even though I have to be very careful with fats (I have almost no gallbladder).  I suspect that's because it's a MCT oil so is absorbed by the small intestine rather than digested by bile action in the stomach.  But it's a blend I'll alternate with a much higher-protein blend, so over time it evens out.  Personally I like the ideas from many old, healthy cultures, that protein is something you need to rest from in your diet, so I'm happy to have meals minus a major protein source.  That said, there will be some in the pepitas and rice.  The idea of this blend is as a light sort of breakfast or mid-afternoon blend, like one might eat a grain and fruit for breakfast for example.  It's a nice thing to pair rice which can be a little 'cloggy' in a digestive sense with a digestive promoters mango, cardamom and pepper, and oil to keep things slippery as well.  My last rice bland also had mango and kiwi, but I used dates, almonds, rice bran oil and agave syrup. Mangos are just coming into full season now, so that was the inspiration.  Often I will just pick intuitively a fresh ingredient that is ready in the garden or is ripe in the shop as a basis to build a blend on.

Consistency-wise, it will not quite gravity bolus, but adding 25-50ml of water just prior to feeding would make it run fine, nice and slowly.  Instead of that, I'll mainly dilute with kefir, which is not quite as thin as water, being made from milk anyway, and I'd use around 100 mls of that or more, depending on how hungry I feel.

Seeing as how I've just been guessing my blends the last couple of years, this will be an interesting exercise!

EDIT: I've run the recipe through the sparkpeople calculator.  It was tricky as I had to go on trust with thing like brand of cranberry juice and they only had coconut milk, not cream (but I compared the tins of each in my pantry and got a good ratio, the only difference between the two is water added).  Here it is, a little different from my calcs but close enough for jazz, as they say.  I'm going to try the nutritiondata site next, and see if I can make it more user-friendly.

These figures are per 250ml serving (kefir not included); vitamin and mineral figures are shown as percentage of RDI.

Calories		328.8
Total Fat		15.9 g
	Saturated Fat	13.1 g
	Polyunsaturated Fat	0.8 g
	Monounsaturated Fat	1.0 g
Cholesterol		0.0 mg
Sodium		42.3 mg
Potassium		441.4 mg
Total Carbohydrate		45.9 g
	Dietary Fiber	2.5 g
	Sugars	17.0 g
Protein		4.3 g

Vitamin A	8.1 %
Vitamin B-12	0.0 %
Vitamin B-6	8.0 %
Vitamin C	141.9 %
Vitamin D	0.0 %
Vitamin E	4.8 %
Calcium	3.5 %
Copper	16.9 %
Folate	16.3 %
Iron	20.0 %
Magnesium	17.6 %
Manganese	46.1 %
Niacin	9.8 %
Pantothenic Acid	4.5 %
Phosphorus	11.5 %
Riboflavin	3.8 %
Selenium	6.7 %
Thiamin	10.0 %
Zinc	8.5 %

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Rice 'n' Mango blend.