Berries are a staple in my nutrition plan. They are low in carbohydrates, high in fiber and I can eat them in volume. I love volume food. I eat pretty much all berries and these are the ones that I keep in my house at all times, in order of importance:
- blueberries
- strawberries
- raspberries
- blackberries
Aside from raw, I love eating berries with my egg whites because I’m weird – no, but really, they’re super tasty. I also love them with my pancakes.
After a recent trip to Florida that involved a 3 hour long flight and a screaming child, I found myself binge watching the Food Network on the TV in front of me. In these 3 hours I discovered the show Chopped. I love the idea of being told here’s some crazy ingredients, figure out something edible. I mean, that’s my life at the end of the week when I’m getting ready for grocery shopping.
While I was on the flight I was thinking about what I had in my own fridge and what I wanted to eat. When I landed and got home, I looked at the fridge, got dressed and went to the gym and then stopped at the grocery store on the way home because even with the items in my fridge I was essentially out of food.
I had decided I didn’t want to spend a ton of time on making dinner and making breakfast would be filling and time saving. Somehow I thought an egg white and raspberry omelette sounded like a good idea. I mean I eat whites and berries and cream cheese in a bowl with oats or granola anyway, so it could work. So thinking about pie filling and the texture, as well as how I make apple sauce ( yeah, I make that too because I don’t like mine as sweet as store bought) I thought about making a berry reduction sauce.
What You’ll Need
- berries of your choice – I used blueberries and blackberries
- water
- sugar or sweetener – I used Splenda
- small to medium pot
Directions
- Since I was cooking for one, I measured out how many berries I wanted to eat solo. Typically, I eat 1 ounce of blueberries, which is about 25g because this is a small handful. So for this I used 25g of blueberries and about 50g of blackberries. In the pot these went.
- Add a few tablespoons of water to your berries, just enough to almost cover the berries. For the roughly 75g of fruit I had in my pot I need about 3 to 4 tablespoons of water.
- Let the come to a light boil and set to low temperature to simmer. Depending on how many berries are in the pot this can take only a few minutes.
- As the berries start to simmer, add sweetener or sugar. I used 2 teaspoons of Splenda. My rule is taste as you add. Sweeteners can be sweeter than real sugar so better to add slow amounts than too much and ruin the batch. If you don’t want to use sweetener or sugar, you can use honey and the same rule would apply.
- Start to finish my berries reduced to a sauce in about 7 minutes. To make the sauce thicker you can either add a thickening agent or simmer longer.
The photo below is of the egg white and raspberry omelette with fat free cream cheese that I made with this reduction, it’s also stuffed with raspberries. I’ve also use this reduction on top of pancakes. You could make your own restaurant quality sauce without having to put pants on! I never argue with an opportunity to not wear pants.
as a topping on pancakes
<3 Cristina
