if i knew you were coming...

Got a nice recipe in the post from a lady called Jane today. She bought a pineapple for her kids last week but they didn't fancy it much. And she couldn't eat it, seeing as pineapples give her migraines. So she baked a pineapple cake, adding a few glugs of one of our smoothies:

Fresh pineapple and innocent smoothie cake

Ingredients

Half a fresh pineapple, chopped into small bits
250ml of innocent pineapples, bananas and coconuts smoothie
450g mixed dried fruit
110g margarine
110g caster sugar
2 large eggs
225g self raising flour
225g plain flour
1 tsp mixed spice
half tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

1. Put the pineapple, smoothie, mixed fruit, margarine and sugar in a saucepan, heat until bubbling and then simmer for 3 minutes.
2. When the mixture is cold, mix it with all of the other ingredients.
3. Put the resulting cake mixture into two loaf tins and bake at 180C for an hour.
4. Make a cup of tea.
5. Time for tea and cake.

Thanks Jane.

an amazing tale about fig wasps

Heard this the other day about figs and had to tell someone.

Figs are pretty amazing. They have many thousands of flowers but chances are you’ve never seen them. They’re hidden away inside the fig fruit and are pollinated by tiny fig wasps. Most of the 750 species of fig have their very own species of fig wasp which in turn is completely dependent on that fig species for food and shelter. It’s where they will grow up, meet their partner and die.

It all starts when a female wasp finds an unripe fig. She crawls through a tiny hole in the fig (opposite the stem end, you can see the mark on fresh figs), to get to the flowers in the centre of the fig. It’s a tight squeeze and she usually has her wings and antennae ripped off in the process.

When she gets through she lays her eggs and pollinates the flowers before she dies – fruit that isn’t pollinated won’t mature and her young will die. The fig detects the eggs' presence and makes a nutritious gall around them. When they hatch the wasp larvae live inside the gall, being fed by the fig tree. Then, once they’re mature, the wasps emerge from their galls into the central cavity of the fig. It's here that they mate. The males then work together to chew a tunnel through the fig wall. After this is complete, they die.

The females collect some pollen from the fig flowers inside the fig and then use the tunnel made by the guys to leave and set off in search of another fig in which to lay their eggs. And then it all happens again...

Amazing eh?

PS this shouldn't put you off eating figs - most cultivated forms are self fertilizing so no wasps get involved. More's the pity.

(by Jan)

pink t-shirt price shock

The pink t-shirt is currently going for £180.01 on eBay. All money goes to charity - you've got three days left if you fancy a bid. Go on, borrow your dad's credit card*.

*remember to ask a grown up first

by 'eck

Word reaches us of an innocent lookalike:

Our Simon...

...and our Ashley.

Separated at birth? You decide.

southport deb

 

We think our Matt quite enjoyed the attention when we put a picture of his fetching trousers on this blog last year. So he'll be really pleased to learn that today we found his mum's blog. Our highlight was a picture of Matt in his dressing gown on Christmas morning playing with his new toy - a set of drumsticks.

If you have a blog with pictures of our Matt on it, please get in touch as we'd love to see them.

snow on the blog

We've already had fog on the blog, now it's the turn of 'snow on the blog'. Personally I can't wait for the 'first spring daffodils on the blog' and 'warm summer sun on the blog'.

bid for a piece of history

We've put the pink tshirt up for auction on eBay. You know, the one that's worn in our new TV advert. To be honest, it was sitting under my desk doing nothing in particular, so we thought that if we auctioned it off, we could raise a few quid for Wellchild in the process. Everyone's a winner.

Well, actually, only one person will technically be a winner, but you get the idea.

So bid now, bid well and bid high. A good charity will benefit. And if you're lucky, maybe one day this will happen:

YOU: "Do you remember that advert for innocent where the bearded man wears that pink tshirt?

FRIEND: "I think so. Is it the one with the dancing frog in it?"

YOU: "No. But there is a bloke with a beard who wears a pink tshirt. And guess what?"

Etc

stuff that happened today

We drank milk.

We ate fruit.

Rosie sat on a silver ball.

Other people sat on a red sofa.

And Raz got too close.

fermenting smoothies

You might have read about some fermenting innocent products in the press today.

Here's what happened.  Two weeks ago, we discovered one of our batches of Strawberries and Bananas smoothie, 250ml bottles (with 'enjoy by' date 15th January) was fermenting.

Fermentation is both natural and safe, but it can make the drinks fizzy.  And we take the quality of our drinks seriously, therefore we immediately recalled all the affected bottles from stores.

This hasn't affected any other recipes and it doesn't affect any of our smoothies in cartons, our kids smoothies or our juicy waters.

We did, however, withdraw the next two batches of Strawberries and Bananas bottles just to be on the safe side.  But, as we expected, they were absolutely fine, as are all the rest of the our drinks.

So just to be totally clear, there are no affected bottles on shelf anymore.

You can read more about looking after your smoothie here.

Obviously, if you've got any questions or issues, please do get in touch.  Drop a line to us at [email protected] or give us a ring on the banana phone.

the miracle of shepherds bush

Spotted outside a carwash, around the corner from the BP garage on Shepherds Bush Green - our logo, which has spookily appeared on the pavement.

We thank Andrew from Konditor and Cook, makers of excellent cakes, for sending us the photo. Weird.

Andrew would also like us to link to Radio Panda, where you can hear music made by him and some other people too.