Five Favorite Summer Drinks #5Things

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining the #5Things challenge once again. This week’s topic is favorite summer drinks. Now I must say I’m not a person who loves a variety of drinks even generally, so this was a hard topic. I mean, I don’t care for lemonade, slush or juice, let alone soda or other fizzy drinks. Here is my attempt at coming up with five summer drinks I will have anyway.

1. Milkshakes. I particularly love banana and vanilla flavored milkshakes.

2. Water with fruit infusions. I love it with strawberries, cucumber, cherries, and lots of other fruits. When I tried to put some orange into my fruit infusion bottle recently, somehow some of the orange got into the actual water, which I didn’t like.

3. Iced coffee. I don’t have this often, as it is usually high in calories, but I do love iced coffee at times.

4. Smoothies. I love creating all kinds of fruit and vegetable smoothies particularly in summer, when there’s a greater variety of fruit available. Of course, I’ll still use frozen berries, as they are less expensive than the fresh kind.

5. Plain, cold water. I usually have two bottles of water in the fridge that I drink from when I want water. Especially in summer, water straight from the tap doesn’t get nearly cold enough for my liking. Out of all the things I drink, water is probably my most frequently consumed.

Making Smoothies

Posted on by Astrid

Like I said a few weeks ago, a staff member at my care facility gifted me a smoothie maker. It’s a totally awesome thing! I already had a blender, but that one was rather huge and is now in the kitchen for the staff to make fruit mixtures with for the clients who can’t chew.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve regularly been making smoothies with the new smoothie maker. Despite its relatively small size, it’s pretty powerful. It blends smoothies within like ten to fifteen seconds. It also deals nicely with frozen fruit without me having to use the pulse function.

Last Saturday, the grocery store delivered some peaches to the facility at my request. We also still had blueberries in the freezer and soy milk in the fridge. I loved making a smoothie with these ingredients. I used:


  • 1 peach

  • A handful of frozen blueberries

  • 1 cup soy milk

  • A handful of oatmeal


Yes, you can actually use oatmeal in smoothies! I knew, but some foodies say you need to use instant oatmeal. Well, at least I didn’t.

Yesterday, a staff bought some food they’d forgotten to order from the grocery store. Among it was fresh spinach. That’s really tasty in a smoothie, so today I chose to make another smoothie. This time I used:


  • 1 banana

  • Fresh spinach (I took a large handful)

  • A handful of frozen blueberries

  • 1 cup soy milk


I didn’t use oatmeal this time, because I didn’t intend the smoothie to be too filling. I loved it though! You hardly taste the spinach. In the pic, it looks a bit weird, but believe me, it was delicious.

Do you like smoothies?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (June 27, 2020)

Posted on by Astrid

Happy late Saturday evening everyone! Welcome to another edition of the #WeekendCoffeeShare. Today is my birthday. I think I still have tompouces in the fridge, so grab a cup of coffee, tea or your favorite cold drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I was stressed out all week about my parents visiting yesterday. As regular readers of my blog may know, my parents are big on independence and in denial of most of my disabilities. They don’t think I should be in a care facility. Like I said yesterday though, they weren’t overly judgmental. My father made a rather bad pun on the facility’s name and my mother asked whether no-one had taught my nonspeaking fellow clients to talk, but that was about it.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you about all the lovely presents I got for my birthday. My parents gave me a drinking bottle with fruit infusion filter. I’d had it on my wishlist for years and am now loving making fruit-infused water. They also gave me a spiky or hedgehog ball. My father said it looked like a virus and my husband joked that they’d gifted me corona. Lastly, they gave me some punches, which I can use in cardmaking or other craft projects. They got these as well as the spiky ball at the thrift store.

My husband gave me a sturdy bookcase for my iPhone. It’s supposed to protect your phone against dropping from 2 meters. I’d rather not try it out though.

Lastly, my mother-in-law gifted me this giant teddy bear! It’s 1.60m tall, which is even taller than I am. I love it!

Giant Bear

I’m still not sure what to call it. I initially called it just Giant Bear, because my big panda was called Big Bear and my not even that little bear stuffy was called Little Bear. Or something. I can’t remember, honestly. Then I figured I should be calling it Joenie, which is my nickname for my husband. My husband said to call it Baloo after the bear in Jungle Book. I guess I’ll call it whatever strikes my fancy at that moment. Rainbow/Sofie, the unicorn, also has two names, after all.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I ate some delicious Domino’s pizza this evening. My husband and I had it delivered to the care facility. I had the spicy chicken pizza and so did he, as my husband usually ends up liking my pizza more if we each order something different. I loved it! Then I had some ice cream for dessert. I got a nice present from the care facility too: a Domino’s gift voucher. I already have a reputation for eating lots of yummy food, even though today was the first time I’d ordered Domino’s since coming to the care facility last September.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that next week, I have a meeting with my community psychiatric nurse and nurse practitioner from mental health. We’re going to discuss my possibly getting EMDR treatment for some of my traumatic experiences. Now that my visit with my parents went well, I feel slightly guilty about considering some of my experiences with them traumatic, but well.

If we were having coffee, I would report on my steps as usual. This week so far, I reached just over 60K. I managed 69K last week and am doubtful I’ll reach that this week, as I’m probably going to have a lazy Sunday tomorrow.

How are you all doing?