At work, on Fridays, our on-staff painter and I like to splurge and have a pancake. Pancake Friday! It helps me get out of bed at the end of a long week. Usually I have the grill cook put blueberries in mine, because it makes me feel better about deviating from my usual wheat-toast-and-egg safety breakfast.

Blueberries are a superfood. I fancy myself the champion of superfoods. I imagine myself sporting a Wonder Woman cape, dashing in and out of kitchens and cafeterias, bombing them with blueberries, walnuts, and spinach. Always looking for ways to incorporate more superfoods into my otherwise tragically indulgent diet, I decided this weekend to embrace the heat and make a cool treat, enhanced by my favorite of the superfoods, the blueberry.

When it’s this hot out, and when you’re as busy as I am, baking is not an option. Heating up the oven is not an option, and spending time on putsy recipes that require special measuring and tools doesn’t really appeal either. All I want to do is get to the pool, but quick.

The SuperPie is a cool treat that you can whip up in under five minutes. Seriously. Five minutes.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/aug/16/196925/

In a mixing bowl, combine two blocks of cream cheese, one small can of sweetened condensed milk, 1 packet of dreamwhip powder, and 1 tsp of lemon extract (or you could use 2 T of actual lemon juice, but I didn’t have a lemon on-hand). You don’t even have to crack an egg or measure sugar for this baby.

Beat with a mixer until everything is well-combined, and then fold in a cup and a half of blueberries.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/aug/16/196927/

Pour into a graham cracker crust. Let me just say this about the crust. Making one from scratch is infinitely better, but I had a storebought one in the pantry and I simply could not resist the siren song of the easy way out.

Making a graham cracker crust is really not hard, and I sort of hate myself for cheating, so don’t follow my lead. You are better than that. Make your own.

Pour the filling into the pie crust, garnish with a few extra blueberries, and pop it into the freezer for a couple of hours.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/aug/16/196929/

Come to mama.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/aug/16/196931/

Superfood Blueberry Pie
2 blocks cream cheese
1 packet Dream Whip
1 tsp lemon extract
1 small can sweetened condensed milk
1.5 C blueberries (a few reserved for garnish)
1 graham cracker crust

Oranges are also a superfood, and while I am not really wont to just sit down and peel and orange and eat one, I am all about the beautiful clementine. Clementines, if you haven’t tried them, are the orange’s sexy little sister. They are petite, and sweet, and really easy to peel.

A clementine salad is an easy side, and it ain’t your mama’s fruit salad.

Into a small bowl, toss three clementines, peeled and sectioned, half a diced cucumber, a few paper-thin shavings of red onion, and a handful of blueberries (leftover from when you made that pie). Whip together a dressing of 3 tablespons red wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of Kirsch (cherry brandy), 2 tablespoons of sugar. If you wanted to really up the superfood ante, you could add in a few chopped walnuts, which also make the list.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/aug/16/196934/

Even Mr. Meat and Potatoes finished his grown-up fruit salad, which is a great testimony to any non-meat product.

Clementine Salad (for two)
3 Clementines, peeled and sectioned
handful of blueberries
1/2 cucumber, diced
several very thin shavings of red onion
3 T red wine vinegar
2 T cherry brandy
2 T sugar

Here is a complete list of superfoods. The beauty of the superfood is that you can eat something that is typically not on your “health food” menu but still feel at least a little bit good about it. I mean, that pie doesn’t quite qualify as a diet item, but you can rest easy at least feeling like you got your antioxidants for the day.

There are so many ways to incorporate them into every-day cooking, I think I’ll start myself a little challenge and make sure that I incorporate at least two every day.

Beans
Blueberries
Broccoli
Dark Chocolate (!)
Garlic
Oats
Oranges
Pomegranate
Pumpkin
Red Wine (!)
Salmon
Soy
Spinach
Tea (green or black)
Tomatoes
Turkey
Walnuts
Yogurt

I’m off now to make myself a spinach and salmon salad with a little yogurt dressing. But first I have to find my cape.