It's Better Than It Sounds
A while ago Sarah found some recipes online for these smoothies this woman was making in an effort to sneak veggies into her kids' diet. As I recall the first one we tried out was a mixture of spinach, mango, ice and maybe a little fruit juice. The sound of blended raw spinach sounded pretty nasty, but supposedly the other ingredients were supposed to make the taste disappear. As I suspected, it tasted pretty nasty. Sarah didn't give up, though, and tried different mixtures, though all of them had spinach in them. Some were better than others.
Another problem we were having was that our blender was having trouble dealing with the smoothies. There were almost always chunks of frozen fruit and ice left in the bottom. For a Valentine's Day present I splurged and bought a Total Blender. I'd been dying to try one ever since watching the 'Will It Blend?' movies, though I wasn't planning on running hockey pucks or iPods through mine.
The new blender did not disappoint, and now smoothies could be made with ease. I found that if I added enough fruit, the spinach did indeed disappear. I was making mine with about a 50/50 blend of spinach to fruit, and that was working fine.
Recently I started on a different tack. I wanted to put protein powder in my smoothies, but I didn't think that would jive too well with fruit. So I made a new recipe. I have to admit that this one seems even nastier than the fruit smoothies. It's surprisingly good, though. I don't even think it's an acquired taste because I don't remember having to choke down the first one I made. I've tweaked my ingredients to where I like them, but you may want to adjust to your own liking. This is a great way to get a good portion of leafy, green veggies into your diet if you're not eating them already.
So that's all that's in it. I start with 1 cup of milk, then add spinach up to about the 4 cup line of the blender. I don't know how much people compress spinach when they're measuring it, since I could probably stuff a pound of spinach into there if I pushed hard enough. I give it a gentle shove, so it's not super loose, but there's still some air pockets in there. Then I add 2 tbsp of peanut butter, 2 tbsp of wheat germ, and two scoops of chocolate protein powder. I top it off with maybe 6-8 ice cubes and a little bit of water.
Then I put on the top and let 'er rip. This makes sort of a milkshake consistency, though not so thick you need to eat it with a spoon. You can add or subtract liquid to adjust that, though it probably won't blend if you take too much of the liquid out.
There's the finished product. That's about 600 calories or so for about a 28 oz. smoothie, with 18g of fiber. You could toss some flax seed meal in there if you want to up the fiber count. The peanut butter adds some fat, but better to eat it this way than on a PB&J. This makes a pretty decent meal replacement, and is good for after workouts.
Another problem we were having was that our blender was having trouble dealing with the smoothies. There were almost always chunks of frozen fruit and ice left in the bottom. For a Valentine's Day present I splurged and bought a Total Blender. I'd been dying to try one ever since watching the 'Will It Blend?' movies, though I wasn't planning on running hockey pucks or iPods through mine.
The new blender did not disappoint, and now smoothies could be made with ease. I found that if I added enough fruit, the spinach did indeed disappear. I was making mine with about a 50/50 blend of spinach to fruit, and that was working fine.
Recently I started on a different tack. I wanted to put protein powder in my smoothies, but I didn't think that would jive too well with fruit. So I made a new recipe. I have to admit that this one seems even nastier than the fruit smoothies. It's surprisingly good, though. I don't even think it's an acquired taste because I don't remember having to choke down the first one I made. I've tweaked my ingredients to where I like them, but you may want to adjust to your own liking. This is a great way to get a good portion of leafy, green veggies into your diet if you're not eating them already.
So that's all that's in it. I start with 1 cup of milk, then add spinach up to about the 4 cup line of the blender. I don't know how much people compress spinach when they're measuring it, since I could probably stuff a pound of spinach into there if I pushed hard enough. I give it a gentle shove, so it's not super loose, but there's still some air pockets in there. Then I add 2 tbsp of peanut butter, 2 tbsp of wheat germ, and two scoops of chocolate protein powder. I top it off with maybe 6-8 ice cubes and a little bit of water.
Then I put on the top and let 'er rip. This makes sort of a milkshake consistency, though not so thick you need to eat it with a spoon. You can add or subtract liquid to adjust that, though it probably won't blend if you take too much of the liquid out.
There's the finished product. That's about 600 calories or so for about a 28 oz. smoothie, with 18g of fiber. You could toss some flax seed meal in there if you want to up the fiber count. The peanut butter adds some fat, but better to eat it this way than on a PB&J. This makes a pretty decent meal replacement, and is good for after workouts.
posted by Gabe at
9:57 AM
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