Almost every morning I drink a smoothie for breakfast. When I deviate, it is normally a concoction of brown rice over a spoonful of almond butter topped with raw nuts and maple syrup — a wonderfully-rich comfort-food. But today I will have a smoothie. Since I’m still on the Eat to Live six-week plan, smoothies are the perfect breakfast. Several people have asked for my smoothie recipe, so here it is:
Breakfast Smoothie
Serves 2
Raw greens like kale or spinach (fill
canister about 1/3 full)
Banana
Apple
2 handfuls of frozen blueberries
5-6 frozen strawberries (or handful of your favorite berries)
5-6 slices of frozen peaches (or a handful of pineapple shown here or mango)
2 scoops berry-flavored Vega meal replacement powder (or another protein powder)
Approximately 5 cups of cold, filtered water (use less water if you want it thicker)
If the greens scare you like they did me initially, just start with a handful and add more as you feel ready. You can switch the fruit up to find your favorite mixture too. I always use a banana and apple as the base.
Blend all ingredients in a blender. I drink half immediately and save half for the next morning. It keeps well in the fridge. Just re-blend for a minute the next day and you’ll be good to go.
I finally splurged and upgraded my blender to a Vita-Mix. Now I feel like I have a monster truck sitting on my kitchen counter. The base is huge, but it is an awesome high-powered blender. Now I can blend smoothies in about 2-3 minutes where my old blender took about 10 minutes. Saves time in the morning, but I still find myself running late every. single. day.
One of the big benefits of blended meals is that more of the nutrients are readily available for digestion. I learned in Eat to Live that it pays big-time nutritionally speaking to chew your food well. The cells in the food need to be broken open in order for the nutrients to be easily digested. So blended foods do the work of chewing for you. I’m already a slow eater, so when I started focusing on chewing my food better, it seemed like every meal was taking forever to finish. I normally have a big salad for lunch and it takes me a good 45-60 minutes to eat. Smoothies work well for me — another time saver!
Cheers and enjoy!
Yumm!
I have heard not to mix fruit with veggies, fruit first veggies second because of fermentation in digestive tract. Your thoughts?
Hi Debra, I’m not a nutritionist. I did ask a R.D. and he doesn’t believe this is the case. Intuitively it sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. How can eating spinach and an apple together be bad? I have been enjoying a green/fruit smoothie almost daily for the past 3-4 years. I feel great. On the other hand, if it doesn’t feel good to drink this combination of foods, then one shouldn’t. Everyone needs to listen to their own body.
I personally don’t believe we should make eating healthy complicated. My philosophy is to eat whole foods as often as possible. That’s it! I’m a big believer of the “keep it simple” philosophy.
Thanks for stopping by,
Christine