Vitamin Jewels - Jugo de Maracuyá (Passion Fruit Juice)

Today Patricia continues guest blogging on Colombian cuisine, with an introduction to healthy, all-natural fruit juices, right in time for the summer!

Take a look at some of the wonderful fruit you can find nowadays in specialty and Latino markets. I recently found feijoas, which are a kind of guava, along with gooseberries and passion fruit.

feijoa, gooseberries, and passion fruit

Here's a tip on making passion fruit pulp: cut the fruit in two, scoop out the pulp with seeds, place it in a vase and mix for 10 seconds with an immersion blender. Pass it through a sieve and then freeze in ice cube trays. One ice cube will be enough for an 8-ounce glass of juice. When frozen, place the passion fruit pulp, water, crushed ice and sweetener back into the vase and mix with the immersion blender. Then, enjoy the most wonderful frapped passion fruit juice this summer. Add some mint and freeze into pops for the afternoon heat. Buy exotic fruit and freeze the pulp as ice cubes to keep at hand all summer long.

For more tips on preparing other wonderful tropical fruits as juices that are full of vitamins, check out the juice chapter in Secrets of Colombian Cooking. If you have doubts about any certain type of fruit, go to cookingcolombia.com and check out the page on Colombian fruit and vegetables, where many of them are photographed for you to see.