Fancy having a Daal curry this lunch? There's a musical treat if you do.
On the inside of the new Daal veg pots there's a record player with a list of songs, all of which are related to food. So tune in, pop your veg pot in the microwave and have a sing-a-long whilst you eat.
Or should we say start, as for our first official bit of news for 2012, we are thrilled to announce that our new juice blends are now in the shops.
You can choose from our delicious apple and raspberry recipe or totally tasty tropical (sorry), depending on whether you need to be transported to a dappled orchard or a desert island.
You can find them in ASDA right now and in other shops very soon (we'll keep you posted as to where and when).
Given that at least one person you know will be on some sort of miserable cabbage maple syrup nothing beginning with C diet right now, why not cheer them up with a bit of sunshine in a carafe?
Or better still, give their eyes and ears a treat courtesy of a shady orange grove and the dulcet tones of Captain Jean Luc Picard.
Or even better still, if you fancy winning yourself a case of our new blends, just tell us your top 3 most ridiculous New Year's resolutions below and the 10 that make us laugh the most will each win a case of our new juice.
We'll pick the winners on Friday 20th January, so get your entries in.
Meantime, to find for your nearest ASDA stockist, just email [email protected]
This competition is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. Congratulations to Katie B, Kieran W, Karen G, Thom B, Yasna, Andi G, Bex, Kerri W, Samantha S and Steven Y. A box 'o' blends winging their way to you very soon.
Today is the day our Facebook page returns from an extended stay at a luxury spa. Pop on over and have a look around, it took us ages to do the drawings, and remember click that 'Like' button if you like what you see.
We're making a new TV advert. The clever ones among you will be able to tell that it features fruit. Using the latest "dropping fruit from a rickety bit of scaffolding" technique, we are hoping to make something beautiful, entertaining and innocent in its nature.
Pete ("the best in the business") is looking after the fruit. He picks it, preens it and sometimes talks to it.
Helen is the director. She's firm but fair, and is guiding us towards sunlit uplands.
And the fruit just keeps rolling. Down chutes, from wires and pretty much every other way you can imagine that fruit could be propelled. We will stop at nothing until we have made fruit do every trick in the book.
The excellent Anna Jones (who created the recipes for our new family recipe book, Hungry?) came along with me to Jamie Oliver’s Feastival on Clapham Common last weekend to talk about the book, make some recipes with kids and dust off the old Blendavenda smoothie bike.
Here we are before the carnage ensued
Fruit prepped, ingredients laid out and head mikes donned, we got kids making the old bread and squashed tomato salad and fruit mess recipes from the book and then followed it with a bun fight to see who got to pedal the smoothie bike first
Though the fighting was mainly amongst all the mums and dads trying to have a go.
Thanks to everyone who came along, squashed, pedalled and ate the results.
Hopefully we'll be going along to more things like this over the summer and we'll be sure to give you plenty of warning the next time we do
Our shiny new family recipe book has been out for 2 weeks now and everyone at Fruit Towers has been cooking up a storm.
Spaddy made Stu a birthday cake using the One Cake Wonder recipe. Janel excelled herself with classic lemon chicken bake, with red French beans and apple and potato rosti. And Annika made enough veggie burgers for dinner and lunch.
Niels and Jess whipped up the sticky sausage and sweet potato mash one night
And then followed it with failsafe spag bol the next
Amy went one step further by tackling the issue of healthy eating in a meeting
Not content with simply making the banana and chocolate cookies for her team meeting
This recipe was very kindly donated to us for the book by Lucy and Claire who write an excellent blog called Crumbs (which is also packed with great recipes and ideas for feeding your family).
There's still time to enter our competition to win a copy of Hungry?Just click here and who knows, it might be your dinner on here in the not to distant future.
Sound the trumpets, hoist the flags, this is a momentous, err, moment. We're welcoming two new carton sizes to the family. We've been making our drinks in 1L cartons for more than 6 years now, and they have served us well. However, the time has come for our 1L cartons to enter retirement.
Whilst we’ll miss them, coming soon to a store near you* are our new 750ml and value 1.25L cartons.
750ml is a good size for those who've always struggled to finish our 1L cartons. 1.25L is a good size for those with many mouths to feed (or one very hungry mouth).
To our 1L cartons, we say thank you for the smoothie storing work you've done. We'll salute you as your cruise liner departs Poole for Antigua. To our 750ml & 1.25L cartons, we say a warm welcome to the family. We know you'll do us proud.
(We added this next bit as a comment below but we thought it was worth adding to the main blog too, in case anybody missed it).
In terms of pricing for our new cartons, we want to be absolutely transparent. Ultimately, it’s up to individual stores what they choose to charge for our drinks, but the RRP** for our new 750ml carton is £2.79, and for our 1.25L carton it is £3.69. This means our 750ml cartons are cheaper per pack, but cost a bit more per ml than our old 1L cartons. Our 1.25L cartons are a higher price per pack, but are the same price per ml as our 1L cartons.
Since we launched our 1L carton in 2004 we have not increased our prices. In that time lots of things have happened which mean it now costs more to make our drinks than it used to (namely, fruit prices have gone up, and we use quite a bit of fruit).
We know that some people will be disappointed by this change, but we hope you can understand that we felt that introducing two new carton sizes at two different prices was the best way to react to the fact that, put simply, fruit is more expensive these days.
* Different stores will launch on different dates from June – August, beginning with Sainsbury’s on 8th June
Given the excellent forecast, if you’re planning a BBQ or some sort of al fresco dining this weekend, we thought you might like a little taster of our brand new family recipe book.
These homemade tortilla chips and salsa dip take minutes to make and seconds to devour.
Think of them as the perfect appetiser. Or as mini crispy boats, ready to transport a cargo of rich tomato salsa to hungry mouths everywhere.
All aboard the good ship, er, Chip.
Homemade tortilla chips and salsa
What you need
For the chips
8 flour tortillas, wraps or pitta breads
Olive oil
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
For the salsa dip
4 ripe tomatoes
2 spring onions
A small bunch of coriander
1/2 a red chilli, deseeded
The juice of 1/2 a lime
Extra virgin olive oil
How to make it
1. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/GM4.
2. Cut each tortilla into 8 triangles and place them on a couple of baking trays.
3. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with smoked paprika and toss the chips to make sure they're all coated. Add a pinch of salt if you like.
4. Bake for 10 minutes, until crispy and remove from the oven.
5. Next, make your salsa. Roughly chop the tomatoes, spring onions, coriander and chilli on a big board. Then, using a large knife, sweep and chop them all together until well diced. Then place in a bowl.
6. Squeeze over the lime juice, drizzle with olive oil, season and mix together. Taste to see if the flavours are balanced, and add a bit more lime, oil or salt if you think it's needed. Or if you're really short on time, bung the whole lot into a food processor and pulse till chunky.
7. Check the seasoning, serve with the tortilla chips and be the toast of your garden/canape party*.
*remembering to tell all your friends that it was a Hungry recipe and that they can buy the book here.
At the beginning of last year, we asked all the people who read our weekly newsletter if they thought it would be a good idea if we wrote a recipe book to feed families with good stuff (having written not one but two smoothie recipe books already).
Hundreds of mums and dads got in touch to say they thought it'd be a very good idea.
So here it is...
A guide to healthy, tasty, no fuss food that the whole family can enjoy (and that don't take ages to make)
It's filled with over 100 delicious, simple, healthy recipes (from 2 minute breakfasts to proper Sunday lunches) and over 85% of the recipes in the book contain at least 1 of your 5-a-day.
There are loads of tips and ideas for getting everyone involved in making, cooking and eating. We've even picked out the bits kids can do in a rather fetching grey to make it even easier.
And there's as loads of other stuff for kids to do, make and help out with to get them involved and excited about food.
Or just keep them entertained while you're waiting for bread to bake or just need something to do on a rainy Thursday.
In other words, a book that makes it easy to get good stuff into your family. Without having to spend hours labouring over the stove, making different meals for everyone or faffing about with miniature sushi.
So to celebrate the launch of this very fine book, we're giving away 20 copies away to the 20 people who tell us their best hungry stories with a happy ending by Tuesday 14th June.
Or if you can't wait that long, you can buy yourself a copy right here or in WHSmith, Waterstones and other good bookshops across the land (as demonstrated above).
Either way, we hope you like it and enjoy many a memorable meal and muffin from it.
Thanks to everyone who entered our competition. Amber, Flo, Madeleine, AJ, Fiona, Annie, Hannah P, Louise, Ami, Florence, Grace, Hannah, Anne Marie, Alice, Anya, Andy, Nicky G, Sarah _nb, Anna and Tom – make a space on your bookshelf. Copies winging their way to you very, very soon.
