When it is full-on humidity and heat, sitting in front of a fan day and night down here in New Orleans, I can’t even think of eating something hot. These are the types of days I love a delicious smoothie the most. While I don’t like to have much in the freezer during hurricane season, I do keep frozen fruit and ice that I can use easily and are ok to eat in the power outage of a summer storm. Smoothies offer me a hearty snack or a small meal that I can have right after a workout or in the afternoon.
A few years ago my doctor realized I wasn’t absorbing as many nutrients from my food as I should be, so we added a smoothie to my day with a boost of nutrient-dense foods including vegetables, greens, radicchio, and different kinds of seeds. This helped me stay fuller between meals and pack in the vitamins I was missing. Smoothies can be a good way to get in the vegetables, minerals, and vitamins that might be missing. It can be an easy meal when it’s too hot or you don’t feel very well and don’t feel like eating. If you are using smoothies in order to skip meals, this might be a good time to dig into why this is happening.
I quickly learned that if I added a dense vegetable to my smoothie I wouldn’t be hungry so quickly, fruit-based smoothies never fill me up for long. Adding a small sweet potato or a quarter of an acorn squash into a cold smoothie does the trick. Also, sweet potatoes, roasted acorn squash, and spaghetti squash add fiber and carbohydrates without changing the sweet flavors of the smoothie.
Here are a few quick ideas:
Ideas for Easy Smoothie Prep: If you don’t have much time in the morning or whenever you want to add a smoothie, you can prep them by adding all the ingredients into a little ziplock or container and throwing it into the freezer - minus the liquid.
Cut up frozen peaches or whatever stone fruits you love the most
Big bag of frozen mixed berries
Boiled small sweet potatoes for the fridge
Roasted acorn and spaghetti squash for the fridge (no seasoning)
Add seeds, nutritional yeast, and spices to whatever your main ingredient will be
Peach And Squash
1 diced frozen peach
½ cup acorn squash
½ cup greek yogurt
1 tbs almond butter
1 tsp nutritional yeast
1 cup of preferred alternative milk
Cinnamon to taste
Strawberry And Sweet Potato
1 cup frozen strawberry
1 small boiled sweet potato
Handful of spinach
1 tbs nutritional yeast
1 tbs maple syrup
1 tsp tahini
1 cup of preferred alternative milk
Cinnamon to taste
Chocolate Oats
1 cup of overnight oats or Kreature of Habit Chocolate Protein Oats
1 cup of frozen berries
1 cup of preferred alternative milk
½ banana
Cinnamon to taste
Chocolate powder to taste (1 tbs to start and adjust accordingly)
Green Machine
Large handful of spinach
Small handful of radicchio
1 cup of frozen strawberries
1 tbs almond butter
1 tbs honey
1 tsp flat parlsey
1 tsp chai or hemp seeds
1 tbs pomegranate seeds
Cinnamon to taste
