Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Loch Ness Smoothie


Before

I've mentioned it here before, about making smoothies. Dump a bunch of produce into a blender and give it a whirl, and you can get your daily servings of fruits and vegetables, and in a way that actually tastes good ...

So yesterday, I loaded up the blender's jar: Apple, pear, orange, couple dates, some raisins, a mix of frozen cherries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, pomegranate seeds, little bit of lemon with the peel; kale leaves, carrot, half a rainbow beet, celery, red cabbage, a couple cups of water, um ... that's all I can remember. 

Put on hearing protectors, push the button, and voila!



After

Serves three, although it will keep in the fridge overnight, as long as you stir it pretty good–the different textures tend to settle out if you leave it longer than a few minutes. 

If you click on the top picture and look at it full-size? You can see the Lock Ness Monster poking his head up from the mix ...

Actually, it's a leaf of red cabbage. 

I think ...

7 comments:

steve-vh said...

Finally a way to eat Kolrabi?

Justin said...

Back in business, blender-wise. Don't have a lot of ingredients, though -- just fruit I've been eating a la carte and my vegetable-based protein powder.
I'll have to do the kale thing. However, using apples makes it really gritty/skin-filled and hasn't been a delightful experience.

Steve Perry said...

Yep, texture is a thing; even the best blenders don't completely liquify everything. Blackberries, raspberries, pomegranate seeds, like that. If it bothers you, you can either strain it, or leave it out.

Unless you are running organic fruit through your machine, best to peel everything anyhow, or at least scrub it really good, and I core apples and pears and pineapples and such.

There are some pretty good vegan protein powders, but I'm not big on adding protein to my smoothies. Depends on what you want. Plenty of protein in plant sources, plus I'm eating chicken and turkey and fish and shellfish.

Dojo Rat said...

With the peel Steve, really?

Yup, I've been drinking a thermos of thistle tea every day. Plus gagging my vitamins down with a nice cup of cold thistle tea, tumeric and supergreen power.
Um, yum... Just hopin' it helps

AF1 said...

Any concerns that all that fruit in liquified form will spike your blood sugar levels?

Steve Perry said...

If I were diabetic, I'd be monitoring things more closely, but fructose mixed with all that pulp, seems to take longer to digest, so you don't get the big spike.

I haven't noticed any particular sugar rush.

I don't figure it each round, but I have a couple times, and with those, I got two large glasses and a little bit, around two hundred calories per glass, plus or minus, depending on the ratio of fruit to veggies.

Can of Coke runs what? 140 calories, and all of those from corn syrup, and not much nutrition there.

White Death gives you nothing but flash powder. With a smoothie full of green and purple and all, you get the pulp, you get the roughage, and while it's mostly carbs, there are a lot of micronutrients there.

Kale, carrot, cabbage, broccoli, celery, apple, orange, cherries, berries, I'm not sure you could eat too much of any of those on a given day. Might turn orange if you downed half a pound of carrots every day for weeks, but I haven't notice any untoward side effects since I started.

Well, except that I turn to follow the sun every time I see it. Fortunately, that doesn't happen much around these parts ...

Steve Perry said...

John --

Oh, yeah, apple and pear peels all the time. A little bit of orange or lemon peels mostly. You don't really notice it.

My smoothies are not like drinking juice, they are more like thick milkshakes in their consistency, and sometimes a little on the gritty side. If you let them sit in the fridge for a few hours, they turn into jello on the top. Probably the agar in the apple or somesuch. Stir vigorously, they liquify and are fine, though drinking them freshly-made is the best.