So this chica is back in Ecuador for a month!! I studied abroad here 4 years ago and during that time, I found an orphanage that I completely fell in love with. I came again to care for the little babies that left a bigger impact on my heart than words can describe. I plan to volunteer at the orphanage as much as I can and do catch-up work for my photography business, which I’m so blessed to be able to do remotely. This year has been a whirlwind, and I felt like I needed a little time to get away to take care of myself, do something I love more than anything in me, and refocus to determine my goals for the upcoming year.

Well, part of taking care of myself involves food, of course! I pre-contemplated this before leaving and brought some ingredients I could use to make sure I was still consuming a nutrient-rich diet while here. Because I’ve lived here before, I was a bit familiar with what I could get my hands on and what produce I’d have access to. All in all, I’m banking on smoothies as being my daily go-to, and here is how I prepared for this:

From home, I brought:

chia seeds
hemp seeds
e3live Renew Me powder (this stuff is the absolute best and definitely worth the money!)
goji berries
stick blender and a mason jar *more detail below

(Ideas of other powders include protein, maca, ashwaghanda, any herbal powders like He Shou Wu, Reishi, Chaga)

Buying local foods:

If you know the region a bit, you may know what to expect, but even if you don’t after doing some research, you can still improvise! Being that I’m in the Andean mountains, I was hoping I’d find some local maca and cacao. Yesterday I wandered around and found some at one of the Artisan markets! I was stoked! The cacao powder also has ginger 🙂

I also found these exotic chocoalate bars, which was some extra icing on the cake!

But back to smoothies.

I knew there’d be bananas and other exotic fruits, like passionfruit, granadilla, tomate de árbol, that I could add to the smoothies so I picked up some produce today as well. If you bring some of the more expensive ingredients from home (seeds, powders, superfoods), you won’t need to spend as much while traveling. And as far as space goes, I just put them in smaller bags, and the food I brought really didn’t take up that much room. Now Ecuador is very cheap, but produce is in many other places as well. Keep this in mind when you’re trying to eat healthy. I bought everything below for LESS THAN $7.

*Equipment

As far as equipment, it definitely depends on what kind of trip you are taking. You may have a blender where you are going, and if you can, inquire at the place(s) you’re staying. When I was in Cabo San Lucas earlier this year, there was a kitchenette in the room with a blender. I took full advantage of that by making smoothies with chia and hemp seeds I brought with me. I am here in Ecuador for a month and did have a checked bag so I was able to bring this kind of thing along. Initially, I knew I wanted to bring a blender to make banana milk (because the only non-dairy milk they have here is soy milk), and I was going to bring a Shake N Take my mom gave me years back. Last minute, I decided to go with a Cuisinart stick blender and a wide mouth Mason jar instead because it’s much more powerful and better at blending and is not much bigger. It’s very, very portable and easy to clean. I’m staying in an Airbnb and have access to a kitchen, but it’s the family’s and is in a separate unit so I most likely will not be using it often.

I’ll conclude with the smoothie I made this morning!

It had water, two bananas, passion fruit, mango, tamarind, chia and hemp seeds, maca, cacao, and e3live powder! Since I don’t readily have access to a kitchen, I just rinsed the attachment from the stick blender with some water over the smoothie and then rinsed the jar with water and drank it when I was done. Then I was able to clean out the little bit of smoothie remnants that were left in the bathroom sink! It was super easy and worked really well. Unless you have a good place to do dishes, my advice is to rinse it right away so it doesn’t dry and get caked on 🙂

So there you have it! Do you have any thoughts or ideas for smoothies while traveling?! If so, leave a comment below!

Today something great happened. Banana Ice cream and chia pudding met, fell in love, and smooshed.

I’m certainly a banana ice cream and chia pudding fanatic as you may already know, but I haven’t put them together until now. And I am so glad I did. When I set out to make a batch of chia pudding layered with some fruit, I thought about making a fruit smoothie too and layering it with that. But I wanted something that was cold and more firm, and that’s when it dawned on me to add banana ice cream to it.

Chia banana ice cream pudding is what I’d like to call it.

So what kind of banana ice cream specifically?

Think more of a sorbet with this.. more fruit than banana. I went with tart fruit one, which consisted of a little bit of frozen banana, frozen cranberries and strawberries, and frozen apricots. I loved the tartness from the apricots and cranberries. I didn’t use any liquid, which made for an awesome sorbet texture. Depending on what kitchen equipment you have, you may or may not be able to do this. My Cuisinart 9-cup processor works like a charm, but it was pretty loud chopping through that frozen fruit in the beginning.

I also thought about making more of a chocolate-y banana ice cream and adding that to a chia pudding too! I don’t see that going awry so you could try that as well! I’ll report back when I get around to doing that 🙂

This treat was a success on so many levels. Here are some of the other things I did that I felt made it so enjoyable in addition to just adding the banana ice cream:

add some superfoods and spices to the chia pudding like shredded coconut, goji berries, cacao nibs or powder, carob powder, vanilla bean powder, cinnamon, allspice, powders like ashwagandha, maca, spirulina or chlorella, wheat grass, ginseng, lucuma, matcha, mesquite, camu camu, mangosteen, maqui berry
give it some crunch; add things like cacao nibs, chopped nuts or grapes
add some fresh fruit too; make your chia banana ice cream pudding a little fruit explosion by layering or just mixing in some fresh fruit – I did blueberries and halved grapes and LOVED IT!

The chia pudding was a very simple mix of chia seeds, almond milk, mashed banana, currants and cinnamon. Look below for an estimated recipe for the whole thing.

My favorite way to consume this was by mixing it all together in a bowl so that the coldness and flavor from the banana ice cream and the bits of fresh fruit could be tasted in every bite!

Berry Apricot Chia Banana Ice Cream Pudding

Prep time

30 mins

Total time

30 mins

This treat will satisfy your fruit cravings in so many ways!

Author: Sarah

Serves: 1-2

Ingredients

-Chia Pudding
2 tbsp. chia seeds
⅓ cup almond milk
1 mashed banana
dash of cinnamon
small handful of dried currants
-Berry Apricot Banana Ice Cream
small handful of frozen cranberries and strawberries
½ frozen banana
large handful of frozen apricot
-Toppings and Mix-Ins
cacao nibs
goji berries
halved grapes
fresh blueberries

Instructions

Mix the ingredients for the chia pudding and place in the fridge for at least a half hour.
Place the frozen fruit in the food processor and process until it forms a sorbet. You may need to stop it and scrape down the sides multiple times.
Add or layer the toppings and mix-ins with the banana ice cream and chia pudding.

Enjoy! Let me know if you try this and what you think of it!