That is WAY too much smoothie. I’m looking for a cup o’ smoothie, not a quart. And I’m not storing it in the fridge because I’m not doing these every day.
Yeah, well, I grew up eating cottage cheese so I acquired a taste for it. But not yogurt. Reality is weird and so am I. :D:D
Alternatively, we stick entire bananas together in a gallon freezer bag and chuck 'em into the freezer. Half a dozen bananmas skinned and in the freezer in under 2 minutes, never to be thought about again until it’s time to make muffins or smoothies. They do stick together a little, but not so bad you can’t disarticulate the desired portion.
I wonder how almond flour would be as a thickener? I may have to try it.
Broomstick, I don’t know what you consider expensive, but as far as protein powders go this is pretty reasonable. I swear by the stuff.
The basic recipe I learned while I was working in the health-food store on campus was
1 cup Milk or Juice
1/2 a banana
Fruit and/or berries and/or certain leafy greens.
I always thought that was a rather thin drink.
I always thought the green versions tasted bitter.
This was when Wheat grass started becoming a fad, too.
I think wheat grass juice tastes like a swamp looks.
When a new bistro/cafe opened in the building where I worked in the 1990’s I tried their berry smoothies.
I liked them better and stole the recipe by watching them make it and asking the owner why he used what he used
1 cup* ice, preferably crushed
1 banana
Fruit and/or berries
a spoonful of yogurt – usually something that matches the fruit.
a splash of juice+
protein powder optional
The portions and proportions are highly negotiable. If you like a lot of berries, feel free to use a lot of berries.
The ice provides the bulk* and the chill.
The whole banana provides the smoothness and traps air, making this kind of smoothie creamy like a shake (rather than thin like the other one).
The yogurt ‘softens’ the ice but most people can’t taste$ it. Without it, the drink tends to feel gritty on the tongue, despite the smooth texture of the pulverized banana.
The juice+ lubricates the ingredients in the blender. Less is required if you’re using crushed ice rather than cubes.
As with a good milkshake or malt, the key is letting everything blend well while it takes on air.
Start with the pulse button to loosen up the ice, then crank it up to the highest speed.
Let it whirl until a dimple forms in the center and sucks itself down to a vortex. Let that vortex spin for a couple seconds, then lower the speed one notch.
Let it whirl until a dimple forms in the center and sucks itself down to a vortex. Let that vortex spin for a couple seconds, then lower the speed one notch.
Did I accidentally paste that twice? No. Repeat the step, letting a vortex form and lowering the speed, until you can’t lower the speed any more. The ‘hole’ in the center is sucking air down into your smoothie. It’s also pushing air out around the edges, but as you lower the speed more and more microscopic air bubbles will become trapped in the creamy solution (more or less depending on how thick your smoothie is).
When you can’t lower the speed any more, well, the only thing left to do is turn the machine off.
Pour your smoothie into a tall glass, rinse% the pitcher, and throw in a straw. Smoothies are best consumed through a straw to avoid a colorful ‘milk mustache’ effect.
Bon Apetit!
–G!
- Be forewarned that it will eventually need to come back out of you. You can certainly make thicker smoothies with a larger proportion of ice, but sooner or later that ice will have to melt and then it will be absorbed by the intestines and redirected to the bladder.
$ The restaurant owner would use 2oz of vanilla yogurt. The vanilla could be tasted in some of the milder smoothies, but not the tanginess of yogurt. I tend to use more yogurt (up to about 4oz) but it’s blueberry with my blueberries, strawberry with my strawberries, peach with my peach halves, et cetera.
- The restaurant owner used apple because it’s relatively indistinct yet sweet. I use pink lemonade because I tend to have it around often. I’ve used ginger-ale, cran-grape, cran-raspberry, cran-apple, apple, and other juices – even water – just to help the ice be a bit less sticky when I start the blender.
% Once in a while a blender pitcher should be dismantled and thoroughly washed. This keeps things sanitary and ensures parts will move smoothly – sugar can act like a strong glue on a blender blade! How often you do this depends on how often you use it for smoothies and/or other things.
I do the opposite–it won’t blend otherwise.
At high speed, the blender immediately creates a cavity in which the blades spin freely. I have to take the pitcher off and bang it on the counter to pop the bubble. At the lowest speed, though, the blades have enough bite to create the vortex. Once this has been going for a bit, I can increase the speed by a notch. Each time I step up the speed, the vortex becomes less well-defined, but as it chops (and warms the smoothie, most likely), the circulating action improves and I can increase the speed more.
The aeration effect is nice, but I always end up underestimating its effect. What looks like a small amount of fruit+milk ends up producing like 32 oz worth of smoothie.
That’s’ only 2 lbs for $23.
If she has a Costco in reach, they have 5-6 lb bags of whey protein for $30-35 (on sale), about 75-80 servings.
It’s not "woo," but on the other hand, we need more research to really know for sure what the long-term effects are, and smoothies are definitely better than juice, or soda.
Your link contains this in the third paragraph (bolding mine):
“Detox” is a great word, because anyone that uses it can be immediately ignored as a woo-peddler.
On the other hand, we have this:
Your linked article does at least cite its source–Robert Lustig in his book Fat Chance. The central thesis (that sugar is particularly bad) is controversial enough, but this particular statement (that blending destroys insoluble fiber) doesn’t seem to have any scientific support at all.
There does seem to be an enormous amount of confusion between juicing and blending. Juicing is the extraction of flavored sugar water from the fruit. Blending just chops the fruit into little pieces (actually huge pieces on a molecular scale). The two processes shouldn’t be conflated at all.
It’s not the cost per unit, it’s having to shell out $20-40 for a big tub of something I don’t even know if I’ll like. If I try it and don’t like it what do I do with the rest of that crap? It would be great to be able to find single-serve samples of this stuff to try out.
I should probably try to find someone who already uses the stuff and ask them for a scoop or two to try.
Same problem with fresh fruit and vegetables - it’s very hard to buy small enough quantities for just one person. Have you tried to buy half a cabbage lately? If I wind up throwing out half (or more!) of the food I buy that’s very poor economy, even if the individual items aren’t that expensive it adds up over time. Frozen fruit is one solution, except that thawing it out typically leaves you with mush that is quite unappetizing. Putting it into smoothies gets around that, but again, I’m not looking to make quarts of this stuff at a time. I’m trying to avoid overeating which is difficult in a society where everything is geared towards purchasing in massive quantities.
Come on. Just because Summer Rayne (who “parlayed her background in environmental science and entomology from Cornell University with a successful career as a fashion model”) is telling you about her sugar detox journey on mindbodygreen.com, you think we’re not dealing with rigorous science?
I buy either Optimal Nutrition Gold Standard Whey (Vanilla) or MusclePharm Combat (Cookies & Cream), depending on which is on sale. Both are far cheaper than meat on a per protein gram basis but the flavors might not fit well with other ingredients. The vanilla is mild, the cookies and cream a bit stronger but not overwhelming or any off flavors.
I’m thinking vanilla would go well with just about any fruit.
I keep some nutritional shakes on hand for when I get sick and have trouble eating - they are fluids and some nutrition even if not ideal, good for when I have the flu - and I could probably use that along with fruit, too.
Leaning towards experimenting with unflavored gelatin and oats, not the least of which because I actually have those in the pantry at the moment. But not this morning - this morning I’m baking bread and maybe making some vinegar slaw because the corned beef and cabbage is, at most, only going to use half that cabbage. I love cabbage, but as long as I have to deal with public as part of my job I have to be careful how much I eat due to… um… gaseous side effects.
Tossed a fresh plum and a handful of frozen berries (blackberry, raspberry, blueberry) and a bit of water into the blender today and hit the button.
Came out very pleasantly sludgy, cold, and yummy. Thick as a shake. Half a standard glass, which was the right amount.
Probably wouldn’t appeal to everyone, but it worked for me.
Will probably experiment more.
Someone’s aura isn’t aligned with his inner goddess.
Yogurt has sugar in it? Since when? You can buy plain yogurt (obviously not you, since it disgusts you) that has no sugar in it.
Carrots, hmm, I think I would experiment with them.
If you use frozen fruit, you won’t need a thickener. And since your blender can crush ice, it’ll whip those up into a sorbet, that you can make thinner with juice. I keep frozen mangoes, berries, peaches, etc. If you add a ripe banana, it will be creamier in consistency. Oh and our grocery store just started carrying frozen acai in little blocks, so I keep that around too.
My other secret if I’m trying to cut calories is to add frozen riced cauliflower. Any flavor it might have, which is little to none, is completely overpowered by fruits.
Whoa. Any idea where the plum was grown? Our neighbor’s farm market has a handful of plum trees that bear amazing fruit, but only for about two weeks out of the year. By the time my GIT has adjusted to way-to-many plums, the season has ended.
Um… no?
It’s not plum season around here, but maybe it was from Chile? California? I’m guessing southern hemisphere given that they’re heading into fall and that’s plum season. Large black plum with yellow flesh and a free stone.
MOST of the yogurt on the store shelves has added sugar, especially the single-serve stuff by large brands like “Dannon” and “Yoplait”. Which is not inherently a problem with moderate consumption, but judging by the quantities purchased some of my store’s customer live on the stuff.
Sure. You can even make your own sugar - my brother-in-law makes his own once a week, it’s no harder than baking bread, maybe even less of a bother.
(I often bake my own bread - made a dozen rolls yesterday morning in between everything else I was doing. Commercial bread also had a lot of sugar in it, more than really needed, and some brands/types have a lot. My current go-to recipe has some, but it functions mostly as yeast food and it’s three tablespoons spread over two loaves, or the equivalent in rolls/breadsticks/whatever I make of it.)
Carrots, hmm, I think I would experiment with them.
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