Smoothies

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and what better day could there be for a green smoothie?

I’ve been meaning to get into green smoothies for a while, and recent emails I’ve gotten as part of the Taste Better “ideal breakfast” series suggest they’re pretty popular, so I finally went for it – it turns out there are more ways to use kale than just kale chips!

This one was totally simple: one banana, about the same amount of kale (in size; I didn’t weight it) and some water.  I blended it up in the Vita-Mix [aff. link, but free shipping!], and it was a bit gritty but tasted better after I added some ice and blended it for a few minutes (without the ice the Vita-Mix turns smoothies into warm soup, and I prefer a cold drink.)

I didn’t measure the water I put in, but while it didn’t seem like a lot I ended up with 3 pints of smoothie, which was pretty filling by itself, plus I remixed the last pint with a scoop of protein powder (I used Absolute Vegetarian Protein, which is 26g of soy, rice, and pea protein per scoop at the lowest overall price I’ve found) which I found helped with the overall texture, smoothing things out a lot.  Which is probably desirable for a smoothie.

From the mails I’m getting, a lot of people add several different fruits to their green smoothies, including strawberries and kiwi, but the core ingredients seem to be a banana and some kind of leafy green, such as kale, lettuce, chard, etc.

I’m getting tired of the bland countertop photos, so I took this one by the window:

As you can see, it was pretty foamy, but that’s after a minute or two of separation (the version with protein powder was a bit more homogenous.)  Depending on your tastes, you can either drink it right away or let it sit for 5-10 minutes for a different texture.

As you can tell, I’m still working on finding ways to add juices and smoothies to my everyday routine, but at the moment I’m pegging green smoothies as a good 2PM pick me up – it’s obviously easier to do when you’re home at that time, but something like a Magic Bullet might work in an office environment – it’s something we talked about at my last workplace but never got around to trying.  Is anyone doing that?  Let me know in the comments!

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