My previous article centered on my first steps into the foray that is smoothies. I wanted to replace my sugary unhealthy, non-nutritious snacks with food that is good for me. And unlike the last article, I am in fact drinking a smoothie as I write this (not cookies.) After about a month, I’ve done a lot of looking around, gotten advice and tips from all manner of sources, and want to share them with you.
And unlike the last article, I am in fact drinking a smoothie as I write this (not cookies.)
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The thing is, a lot of this is trial and error. It’s fun to try things, and I never made a mistake that ended up being more dreadful than tossing an entire pitcher of smoothie nightmare away (that particular experiment yielded a chunky, black-looking concoction that somehow managed to smell worse than it tasted, while tasting worse than it smelled.) I felt bad about wasting it, but it was truly inedible and I learned something. So I’m chalking that up as a win. If you feel the call for adventure and want to learn on your own, I salute and applaud you. If it were me, I’d skim the article to see what was interesting and what I could integrate easily, or use to fill in holes in my knowledge bank.
Blender: Get the best one you can afford. Quality and ease of use does go up with price, and plateaus out after a while. In other words, most blenders fives time as expensive as X are not necessarily five times better than X. That said, do get one that can do single serving cups with lids you can take to go. Besides, most smoothies only last a day or so in the fridge, so it’s better to make a small amount and drink it sooner than later.
Dates: Pitted dates are fun. They’re like the delicious part of Fig Newtons. They lend healthy sweetness. Dates don’t liquefy in the blender though, and just turn into chunks at the bottom of the glass. At least in my blender.
Spinach: It doesn’t taste, and a little can be put in almost every smoothie you make. Low risk, high reward food.
Temperature: Making a frozen smoothie with frozen ingredients makes for a smoothie that is thick. Be careful adding yogurt as this additional thickness will prevent the blender from mixing things around. Add liquid to get things going. Also, the colder a smoothies is, the less you will taste it. Good trick for the spirulina ones. Let other ones “rest” and defrost for a couple of minutes to allow the taste to really bloom.
Bananas: Like spinach, hard to taste, and it seems like every single recipe I find has some in it. Peel a few (this is important), cut them up, and freeze them. They also lend a healthy sweetness. There are indications that a ripe banana with black spots has more health benefits than a plain yellow one. In fact, at some stores the black-spotted bananas are cheaper.
Frozen fruit: While I’m on the subject of temperature and frozen bananas, having a freezer stocked with an assortment of frozen fruits kills two birds with one blender. You can keep a bunch of fruit that doesn’t spoil quickly, and it’s already cold so ice cubes aren’t needed. Easy.
Liquids: Liquids are your operational and textural friend. If something isn’t blending, add a little more of the liquid that’s called for in the recipe, and things should improve.
Cleaning: Clean up right away. Most times, cleaning cookware is a pain because of the fat and grease. I’ve found that with almost all of the recipes I’ve tried, the blender blades and cups rinse clean easily with just water. This makes sense to me because there is no fat. Also, rinsing right away makes your equipment ready to go when you get a hankering to make a smoothie.
No miracles: I do not have illusions that what I’m doing will increase my memory, regrow hair, lose weight, live to 101, or achieve superpowers from the superfoods. This is why I ignore silly names people give recipes used to attract attention like “Anti-Aging Smoothie and Mega Power Super Blast!” I know that I am replacing non-healthy food with healthy food on a consistent, lasting basis. This will gradually lead to better overall health, and that is what I’m ultimately after.
Find a system to keep recipes: Again, easy is better. What I do is troll the internet and use Pinterest as a dumping ground for recipes I want to try. This is easy because I can just click the “Pin It” button and they all go to a single place. Once I try a recipe and get it the way I like, I manually enter it into my Recipe Clearing House of Choice (allrecipes.com). I have a friend who has an easier, low tech method: she writes them out on a post-it and take a picture of it, so her recipe book is simply a photo album right on her phone.
Sweeteners: Generally, the more sweet a food is, the less healthy. This is why bananas are popular: they add sweetness as well as other beneficial vitamins and minerals. I’ve also found that if a recipe does call for sugar, you can substitute 1:1 for honey. Yes, honey is still sugar, but like the banana, is a little healthier than refined sugar (which is what I’m trying to avoid). Mostly, fruit-based smoothies are sweet enough. It’s the veggie ones that need a little help.
Peeling kiwis: Kiwis are my go-to fruit of choice. They’re delicious. Peeling them has proven…problematic and more than a few times resulting in a hair’s breadth away from an ER visit. I heard from my good friend the Internet that the kiwi skin is edible and actually has some healthy properties like loads of fiber. I just wash it, remove the hard ends, quarter it, and blend it. This is the benefit of blenders: you can eat the normally inedible parts of food (don’t tell my daughters I use bruised bananas.) Research and experiment!
Vegans: I’ve found that in my search for good-quality-high-yield foods, people that embrace the vegan lifestyle have done a lot of the research and heavy lifting already. They know what foods have the highest fiber, protein, and pros and cons of foods that are used in smoothies. And while I do enjoy meat…generally not in smoothies. Much can be learned from the work they have already done regarding specific kinds of foods. If you’re going a meal-replacement route, you’ll need this info to bolster what you can’t get from meat, fish, and dairy.
Play: Sometimes, just play. Dump a truckload of vanilla ice cream and some berries in there. Look for recipes that have nothing to do with healthy but sound delicious. Try slushees, milkshakes, “adult” frozen drinks, or whatever. Have fun. Impress your friends and neighbors.
Flavor Separation: This was an odd lesson. Sometimes, when thrown together and homogenized, flavors lose their individuality and become part of the smoothie collective. This is why “Key Lime Pie” smoothies don’t work. It actually matters tasting the concentrated crust, pie filling, and whip cream separately. Put them all together and they lose their magic.
Load Order: This was surprisingly difficult to find, and very inconsistent in recipes. Possibly because there are two methods. For the single serving containers where the business end is screwed on the bottom, load the hard ice, smushy fruit, then liquids last. For the traditional large containers, do the opposite: liquids, leafy greens, and then hard frozen fruit. The theory is the same: softest foods closest to the blades, and heavy frozen ingredients farthest from the blades.
Lastly, after all my research this is what I decided on. My goal is to pick one of these items per day, and all of them once per week.
Superfood Serving size/day
Flax/Chia/Hemp 3 – 4 T
Ginseng 1 – 2 g daily up to 3 months
Maca 3 – 6 tsp
Matcha ½ tsp – 2 tsp
Spirulina 1 T
Cacao Powder 1 T
Oats Up to 1/2 cup
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