Smoothies

shaumom

My daughter has a lot of health problems and having smoothies in the morning have been a life saver for her, energy-wise. She loves them.
What has worked for us - to keep it low energy - was making something called a 'smoothie pack.'

This is a ziplock bag with everything that has to be frozen, or that can be frozen, inside the bag. We make them over a weekend and store them in the freezer until needed.

For breakfast, add the right amount of liquid plus the bag's contents to the blender, and you've got your smoothie. Nice and easy.

For every smoothie, we usually use:
1/2-1 cup liquid. We add this to the blender, pour the smoothie pack in after it, then blend it up. If there is not enough liquid, we add more. Some liquid ideas: water, milk (dairy, or any non-dairy milks like almond, soy, coconut, rice, etc...), coconut water, coconut milk, fruit juice, herbal tea, regular tea

1 1/2 cups fruit - at least half of it should be frozen, for a good texture (we chop up fresh fruit into 1-2 inch chunks and put them in the freezer. Then, the next day, we separate them into the smoothie packs, 3/4 cups (if we're going to add fresh fruit) or 1 1/2 cups.

We tend to use the full 1 1/2 cups frozen fruit, because chopping the fresh fruit when making the smoothie adds more work and we're going for speed and ease, you know? Some commonly used fruits that work well in smoothies are: berries of any kind, pineapple, mango, peach, orange, banana (over ripe bananas add even more sweet - and cooked apple is actually pretty awesome, too).

2-3 ice cubes of thickener- If we use all frozen fruit, we often don't even need this. But if desired, we put yogurt into ice cube trays, freeze them, and add 2-4 cubes to each bag. I know some folks have used peanut butter powder or raw oats or chia seeds, too. I don't know the amounts of these as well, though. I know some folks use peanut butter, but when we've tried, it had to be blended with NON-frozen smoothie ingredients first, and then ice was added and blended. Otherwise, even if added as unfrozen peanutbuter, the peanut butter just separated into little frozen chunks rather than blending and was kind of nasty.

Extra flavor or vitamin 'stuff' - If your fruit isn't very ripe, or flavorful, sweetener will be really important. Honey or agave syrup can work well. Or a few chopped, ripe dates or raisins, say. Or maybe you want an herb or an extract, like adding cinnamon or vanilla to a cooked apple and ripe banana smoothie, say. for extra vitamins, there are protein powders, wheat germ or flax, or veggies like cooked carrots or greens like kale or spinach, or even a vitamin powder.

Usually, if we have powders to add, we don't freeze them and just add them into the smoothie - but you can measure out the amounts ahead of time and put them into little snack sized ziplock bags, for convenience when you make the smoothie.



Re: recipes and feeling full.

I have noticed that our recipes with more protein have tended to leave the kids feeling more full. Also, we usually were looking for a FULL breakfast worth of calories, so we don't look to making ours low cal.

Some favorites of the kids have been:
coconut milk (not to drink, but canned) and pineapple juice, canned pineapple we have frozen - that's it. like a piña colada. Could add a protein powder for more bulk, I would think.

orange juice and carrot juice, frozen mango, yogurt cubes

milk, frozen banana, yogurt cubes, peanut butter powder

soy milk, frozen strawberries and frozen bananas, yogurt cubes

soy milk, frozen strawberries, yogurt cubes, cocoa powder (sometimes peanut butter powder, too)

For bulk and to feel full longer, honestly, I'd look at getting some bulk soy or milk powder, or look at raw oats - something with protein, again. I see all of them in bulk at health food stores pretty often.



This site has a whole bunch listed that might help give you ideas, too -
https://helloglow.co/make-ahead-3-ingredient-smoothies/

rheddmobile

I don't have the issue others have mentioned of "drinking my calories" because my smoothies are more like ice cream and require a spoon, and they don't have that many calories anyway, around 200. Greek yogurt, a little almond milk, frozen strawberries, blueberries, or cherries, no added sweeteners. A squirt of lime juice. Sometimes cinnamon or dark chocolate. It's basically just frozen berries and Greek yogurt in a blender. If you can get hold of mamey fruit, it also makes a great smoothie! Imagine a big orange avocado, only it tastes like pumpkin pie. If you use ripe fruit you shouldn't really need sweetener.

I got a coupon from Smoothie King as swag from a race, and was looking at their nutrition info. Good grief, what a lot of calories and sugar! Even in the ones which are advertised as diet food. Their smallest diet smoothie which is sweetened with stevia has something like 400 calories, 60g of carbs and 40g sugar. What is the stevia even doing in there if it already has that much sugar? Coupon went in the trash, oh well.

lemurcat12

Purchased smoothies can be terrible, yeah. I've found one local place that has okay ones, but not as many veg as I'd use at home and still too high cal for the amount you get, so I don't do it (plus overpriced!). Mine are around 350-450 (which is what I want for breakfast), but take forever to consume, multiple glasses. I don't have the issue with drinking them vs. eating them that some do, in fact often the drinking is a bonus, part of why I want a smoothie.

It's really important to me that mine include vegetables (as in my mind a meal does) and usually a couple of different kinds, as well as fat and protein.

laurenebargar

Smoothies didnt fill me up until I started adding oats to them.

My two favorite right now are cinnamon roll smoothies which is oats, vanilla greek yogurt, a banana, cinnamon almond milk and some brown sugar

And pumpkin pie, canned pumpkin, almond milk, oats, vanilla greek yogurt, cinnamon, and a banana