Saturday 7 January 2012

Smoothie test

I read a few blogs here and there, mostly because they're health & fitness blogs and I've followed the people for a while and am interested in what they have to say and in following their journeys as people.  One of these is a lady who (amongst many things) is a vegetarian with a focus on raw foods; Laura.  She's a total whizz with the green monsters and smoothies in general, makes them all pretty and textured too, and I'd been interested in smoothies for a while.  I've dabbled here and there and been mostly limited to quite boring, samey ingredients of banana, banana, strawberries, banana, maybe blueberries, but that's been it.  I've also tried getting greens into the smoothies but I've only ever had "difficult" greens available for that; things like kale and winter greens are extremely fibrous and with a hand blender, you end up with a very tricky (in fact bordering on unpleasant) smoothie that really feels like you are forcing yourself to eat it.

In an attempt to have more of a proper go at smoothies, I got some peaches to freeze and decided to try the other blender attachment, which is basically a small table-top blender that you fix the motor section to the top.  And this is the result...


Having checked Laura's blog for some recipe inspiration I blended up:-
  • Half a frozen peach
  • Half a frozen banana
  • 1/3 iceberg lettuce
  • 1 scoop chocolate whey protein
  • 100ml milk
  • 2x ice cubes
And was amazed by how thick it turned out.  It's like a mousse!  And it's a huge bowl.  Really a lot bigger than I was expecting and a little bit too sweet and slightly bland, but I'm having it for breakfast anyway.  Next time, I'll drop the milk down to 50ml, up the peach to a whole one or even two and see how that changes the taste.  I'm looking to get more acidic tang from the peaches and a bit more flavour.  The texture is so aerated that it's a bit difficult to eat; you need to chew the air bubbles out a bit before you can swallow.  Not sure it's a practical breakfast for me seeing as how long it takes to eat, but it's a bunch of fruit and veg in a bowl in an easy format which has to be a good thing.

2 comments:

  1. Glad your on the green smoothie wagon! I think they take a lot of experimenting to get right depending on what greens and fruit you use versus how sweet or strongly flavoured your protein powder is etc. If it takes too long to eat like that you could add more liquid and drink it instead?

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  2. Lettuce? Now that I would *never* have thought of!

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