Smoothies 2 Ways

A smoothie is a better option for a meal replacement or snack than those overly processed meal replacements you can buy in the store. You never know what is in those or how much nutrients you are actually getting. And they are hardly filling. If you have any fruit or vegetables on hand (fresh or frozen) you can have a smoothie in hand in minutes that taste good and you know is good for you.

My partner opts for fruit based with greens while I have had issues with enough fruits that I have a hard time finding fruits I can eat. I find a lot of the fruit in the grocery stores where I live are force ripened. In that case, the fruit looks good on the outside but the inside is another story. Have you had fruits that look good but either are too crunchy (and not in a good way), or lacking in flavour? That usually is an indication that the fruit is force ripened. When fruits are force ripened not all of the natural sugars have been converted fully and some people may have a hard time digesting them or their body reacts to the sugars as if they are pollen.

I have included 2 recipes below. The first is my partner's favourite fruit based smoothie and the second recipe is the vegetable based on I usually make for myself.

Ingredients - Fruit based smoothie

A quarter to one and a quarter cups of your liquid of choice -

1 cup Greek Yoghurt or Skyr

4 cups of fresh or frozen fruit - you can use one type of fruit or use 1 c strawberry, 1c mango and 1 c banana or whatever else fruits you have on hand.

one to three cups Leafy Greens -

Directions

Fill the blender container with the greens.

Add a quarter cup of your liquid and pulse the blender to begin the blending

Top with whatever fruit you have decided to use and top with the yoghurt. Pulse the blender again and add more liquid if needed. Some fruits and greens can be drier than others so you might need to adjust the amount of liquid after adding the yoghurt.

Blend until smooth and serve immediately.

Ingredients - Vegetable based smoothie

One cup of kale

One and a half cups of tomato

a half stalk of celery

One stalk of green onion

half a garlic clove

one tablespoon of lime juice

One eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper

a pinch of sea salt

Instructions

Blend the kale and tomatoes in your blender until smooth.

Add the celery, green onions, garlic, lime juice, red pepper, and salt and blend until well mixed

Notes

For an extra zip – add a dash of your favourite hot sauce, or even add 1/2 jalapeño pepper.

Kale can be substituted with any leafy green.

For yoghurt. you can opt for regular yoghurt. I prefer a denser yoghurt such as Greek or Skyr as the smoothie is thicker and has a texture more like a milkshake. It also seems more filling.

I like to use a lot of greens in my smoothies. I tend to pack the blender with the full three cups but if you are not sure if you would like that much greens in your smoothie, you could always start with one cup and work up to the full three.

I like to use Arugula in my smoothies as I like the taste. But if you don't like Arugula, you could use a mixture of greens such as spinach and kale. Spinach has a much milder taste.

The liquid you use can be water, milk (dairy or plant based) or fruit juice. I look for low calorie options no matter what I use.

The amount of liquid helps blend your smoothie but it is also a personal choice. You might like your smoothies very thick. But remember the more liquid you use, helps your blender do its job.

For those nitpickers out there, while technically tomatoes are a fruit, I can still eat them as it is hard to force ripen a tomato. If they are red on the outside they are generally ripe.