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!

OK, I had two problems today: I run a website about juices and smoothies, and it doesn’t have any smoothie-related posts on it, and secondly, I had a big bowl of leftover chilli that just… didn’t taste right.

It wasn’t bad chilli; there was just something about the spice mix that didn’t appeal to us.  Fortunately, I discovered that it tasted better cold (some spices just taste dramatically different depending on the temperature,) but eating a bowl of cold chilli just seems sad.  Like I’m one step away from eating directly out of a can.  Over the sink.  Not that I ever do that.

So I thought to myself, self, why don’t you make your first chilli smoothie?  That’s right, I turned this:

…Into this:

You may think that this is a really bad photo, but note that I am not apologizing.  I have nothing to apologize for, really, other than the fact that I made a chilli smoothie.  The thing looked really, really bad.  There’s no way you’ll see this in a restaurant that wants to stay open for more than a week.

I always took solace in the fact that the Vita-Mix would be a handy thing to have if I ever broke my jaw; I just didn’t expect I’d be doing a dress rehearsal.

The chilli had a fair bit of liquid in it, but not enough to produce more than a slurry of smoothie.  I was faced with a horrible choice: add water to the mix, resulting in a larger quantity of what might be a very bad idea, or drink it thick, in which case it wouldn’t pour as much as tumble into my mouth and down my throat.

I went with the thicker version, and other than the weird “I’m not proud of what I’m about to do but this is for science” sentiment I was feeling during the process, the chilli smoothie was actually a pretty good success.  It’s definitely the strangest protein-rich smoothie I’ve made, but I saved a lot of money on powders this way…