how to make a smoothie

I’ve written about smoothies a couple of times before, here and here. my posts evolve, as my smoothies do. but after a discussion last night about making good smoothies, I decided to document the one I made today. (still enjoying it, btw.)

I generally make them with whatever fruit I happen to have around, and I always keep fruit of some sort in the freezer. adding frozen fruit to smoothies is just absolutely the best idea ever because you don’t have to add ice cubes if you want that cold, frothy, shake feel to it.

generally, if I’m just making a smoothie for myself, I do it in my magic bullet. if I’m making more than one, I use the huge, loud, clunky blender. their mixing abilities are about the same, and I prefer the easy cleanup of the bullet when it’s just for me.

since I found out that I have a dairy allergy or sensitivity and that yogurt and whey were very high numbers for me, I have not been able to add any yogurt. I used to always put in some plain greek yogurt, just for the texture and the protein. oh well. so now I’m a little at a loss for how to get some extra protein into it, since the obvious whey powder is out. sometimes I pulverize some nuts to add. today I did almonds and pecans.

now, the bullet does this pretty well. however, if you happen to have one of the really COOL vitamix blenders that they sell at costco and are on sale right now and come in RED, then you can do this without being left with a bunch of nut carcasses that you have to pick out and set aside since they didn’t get ground up. just sayin’… so I added that, plus a spoonful of milled flax seed to my cup. I already had half an orange (which was in the fridge and needed to be used up), and 4 or 5 big spinach leaves. then I threw in a bunch of frozen berries. raspberries from my garden last summer, marionberries from costco, and blueberries from safeway.  I really really like putting raspberries in. just gives it a good tangy taste that I love. however, if you DON’T have a good pulverizing blender like the vitamix which is on sale and comes in RED, and you have a problem with chunky, seedy textures, you might want to avoid fruits with a lot of seeds like raspberries. then I add a splash of vanilla extract and fill up the cup with unsweetened coconut milk. almond milk is good too, and if you can do dairy, cow’s milk is just fine. now seriously, you don’t have to sweeten it. fruit is sweet. our society would be a lot better off if we could come to terms with this and stop adding sugar to everything. retrain your taste buds! you really don’t have to add the vanilla, either, but I like how it just seems to bring out all the flavors a little more. and then you blend. and blend and blend. until it is satisfactorily blended. hard to see, because I do not have a fabulous camera (tempted to put a plug in here for the canon rebel we really really want, but I’ll restrain myself) and I am not a good food photographer, but the finished texture is a little chunky. mostly seeds from the fruit, and a little bit of the white stuff from the orange. but really, it’s very well mixed. you can adjust the thickness with the amount of liquid you put in. I like to make mine a little less thick because when you have more liquid, it blends better and faster. I’m impatient. AND, for those of you who were panicked about the fact that I was putting spinach in there, notice the lack of big, scary, green chunks. (fyi, if you’re making this for your kids, only let them see you putting in fruit that they like. you can hide all sorts of other good stuff in there, but if they’re anything like mine, as soon as they see something ‘yucky’ go in there, the whole smoothie is ruined, whether they can taste it or not.)

so there you go. smoothie 101. or maybe 201? I don’t know. or maybe smoothie 101 with the paleo emphasis… right. I kinda want to go back to school. can you tell?