Melon and ripe banana with smooth yoghurt and honey

For a morning when appetite has turned up on its own

Easy10 min hands-on · 10 min totalServes 1

A bowl of cubed melon and sliced banana topped with yoghurt and a drizzle of honey.

Increase the quantities in proportion. There is no cooking step to complicate a larger batch.

Some mornings arrive with an appetite attached, and this is the bowl worth having ready for them. Ripe melon cut away from its skin and every seed scooped clear, sliced banana that gives slightly under a finger, a thick smooth yoghurt spooned generously over both, and honey drizzled across the top. Nothing is cooked and nothing needs to be. The only skill in it is choosing the fruit well, a melon that smells sweet through the skin and a banana with no green left at the tips, because underripe fruit is where most low-fibre kitchens come unstuck. Cut everything soft and small and this becomes a bowl you can eat with a spoon and no thought at all.

Suits after surgery, a narrowed bowel, chemotherapy diarrhoea, a new stoma, during pelvic radiotherapy, after a low anterior resection

Tags No cooking · Quick

Ingredients

Contains: Milk

250 gmelon, skin and seeds removed, cut into soft cubes
1ripe banana, sliced
150 gthick smooth yoghurt
1 tbsphoney

Method

Cut the melon flesh away from the skin and scoop out every seed, then cut it into soft, bite-sized cubes.
Slice the banana and pile it into a bowl with the melon cubes.
Spoon the yoghurt generously over the fruit and drizzle the honey across the top.

Watch-points

Cut all the skin and every seed away from the melon before you cube it. The pips and the pale fibres that hold them are the parts to lose.
Choose a banana that is properly ripe, soft to the touch with no green left at the ends.
Use a yoghurt with nothing folded through it, no fruit pieces, seeds or granola.

Stoma note: Banana helps thicken output. If things are running loose, use an extra half banana and go lighter on the melon.

Make it more nourishing

Use a full-fat yoghurt rather than a low-fat one, and stir in a tablespoon of skimmed milk powder for about 30 kcal and 3 g of protein extra.
Add a second tablespoon of honey over the yoghurt, for about 60 kcal more.
Whisk 2 tbsp of skimmed milk powder into 200 ml of cold whole milk and drink it alongside, if a bowl of fruit alone will not see you through to lunch.

Swaps

Instead of melon, use tinned peaches in juice, drained: useful when melon is out of season or you want something already prepped
Instead of honey, use golden syrup: an equally smooth alternative if honey is not to hand

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