Smoothie Central

My mum got us a ginormous mixer/blender/more attachments than I know what to do with thingie for Christmas. When we got it, we couldn't figure out how to actually open the blender jug, and it was nowhere in the instructions. Everything we tried seemed like it would break a brand new blender jug, so we put it in the back of the cabinet, emailed the company, and kind of forgot about it. Till the end of January, that is, when I remembered, and we pulled it out, carefully examined the largely unhelpful diagram on a sticker, and then realised it was actually quite easy. The tricky part was that the blender doesn't unscrew normal way - instead of "righty tighty, lefty loosey", it is some non-rhyming, and thus nonsensical, scheme.

Once we figured out how to open it, we could use it. That coincided with me being home alone for the past two weeks, and I decided that while Andy was away, I'd have a smoothie every day! I don't know why it had to be when he's away, but it made sense at the time.

Mango, banana, soymilk, oats, and LSA.

Andy comes home tomorrow, so now seems like a good time to share my smoothie knowledge, and photos. Some of these things may not be revelations to anyone, but they were to me - I've been slow to the smoothie bandwagon, because of the lack of blender till now.

Banana, peanut butter, and soy milk.

Frozen fruit makes a smoothie which is more like a bowl of ice cream. And there is nothing more wonderful than having a bowl of ice cream for breakfast. Fruit that is cut before freezing is best for my (non-Vitamix) blender, except in the case of bananas - whole-frozen bananas break into pieces pretty easily, but once they've been sliced it seems the pieces freeze together into a block.

Pina Colada - pineapple, coconut milk, and lime juice.

Frozen pineapple is really good, but it's probably worth cutting out the fibrous core before freezing. We don't bother with this when we're eating pineapple, but there were a few fibrous chunks in my pineapple-y smoothies.

Tropical - mango, banana, pineapple, LSA, oats, lime juice, and coconut milk.

Green smoothies are fo reelz - they don't taste like spinach at all. I knew this in my head, and have always thought green smoothies are a cool idea, but when confronted with my first celadon-hued smoothie, I was a bit trepidatious. Until I had a taste.

Oats, almond meal, ceylon spinach, mango, banana, and pineapple.

In addition to adding green veggies, you can make orange smoothies, with carrot!

Oats, almond meal, carrot, spinach, blueberries, raspberries, banana, and sunflower butter.

Adding a small handful of oats, soaked overnight in water or milk (soy or coconut, for me), makes me feel full all morning.

Oats, banana, almond meal, and I don't know what else!

I had the clever (I thought) idea of soaking almonds and adding them to the smoothie, like basically making almond milk without straining. Not a good idea - the smoothie had lots of throat-tickling chunks of almond that were still chew-able, rather than soft. Almond meal, however, is a good way to pump up the protein for a post-exercise smoothie without choking.

Almonds, soaked in a bit of water, and blended up with a banana, and with soymilk that was rinsed around a nearly-empty jar of chocolate sauce.

I prefer to eat my smoothie out of a bowl, with a spoon, in almost every case. This reduces the likelihood of painful brain freezes.  This one looked thin enough for a glass, but then I ended up eating with a spoon in the end.

Brain freeze aside, eating a big bowl of ice cream for breakfast did make me very cold on a few occasions - it must have cooled my core down, or something. This was good on the mornings when I rode in to uni, but on a Saturday morning I had to dive back under the doona to warm up - when it was 32 degrees outside.

Blueberries, mango, pineapple, oats, flax seeds.

Getting 2-4 serves of fruit, the odd serve of vegetable, a serve of rolled oats, and most mornings some almond meal and/or flax seeds is a pretty good start to the day, I think.

Carrots, oats, almond meal, flax seeds, mango, and banana.

So, what am I missing? I readily admit that I am still a smoothie novice, so give me your favourite smoothie tips!