The art of making smoothies with a fork

Ingredients:

• 3 Tbsp of yogurt
• 1 banana
• juice (of your choice or whatever's available)
• honey (optional)
• fork (not optional)
• glass (also not optional)

The other day I came home from work craving a smoothie. And although there are plenty of cafés along the way, I neither like nor trust their smoothies. If you're drinking something which kind of tastes of ass with sugar added it's not really a good sign or wonderfully appealing to the taste buds. Therefore, I decided to make my own. With a fork. It's not like I have a blender, much less electricity to use the blender so I've had to improvise a bit.

In order to make this smoothie in Nepal you need a fork. And a glass or mug, or any receptacle with high enough sides to mash the banana against the sides with the fork at a high speed without spilling the banana puree onto the laminated kitchen floor. So you have your fork and glass, great, now you need to locate a hole in the wall which sells dairy products. Perfect, you found one. Buy yogurt. Now go across the street and buy those shriveled looking black things which they call bananas. Go ahead and buy six of them, it may take a bit of practice, or it may be so delicious you immediately want another.

You have the yogurt, bananas (a carton of juice would also be a good idea), a fork and glass, wonderful. Wash bananas. Yes, wash them. You don't want to get street bacteria on the wrong side of the banana peel. Now peel the banana, and cut up into small pieces in glass. Grab fork, mash banana into mush with fork until it resembles baby food. The best way to do this is to start slowly, making sure all large chunks of banana come between the prongs of the fork and the side of the glass. Increase speed until the banana is thoroughly mushed.

The hard part is over, now you can add the yogurt. Fill half way full, mixing banana and yogurt as you go along. When the two are completely combined, add juice and/or honey to taste, a little at a time to make sure everything is properly combined. The trick is to make it feel and taste like a smoothie so you really need to makes sure it's well mixed. You really don't want to come across random pieces of green banana as you're chugging this down. Once everything is combined and the contents of the glass are all th same colour, find your sunglasses and sunny corner to sit down in and enjoy the fruit of your labour with a spectacular view of the snow peaked mountains.