Astranoir

I have been making about one smoothie per day since I started experimenting with smoothies. So far, my go-to always delicious smoothie is chocolate, peanut butter, spinach, and some sort of fruit. The smoothie pictured below is chocolate, peanut butter, nutella, and blueberry (from frozen yogurt).

I have had so much success with adding spinach to smoothies without negatively affecting the flavor, that I decided to become more adventurous… For context, I am not a fan of raw carrots. I love cooked carrots, particularly in curries and other savory dishes. Raw carrots are hard for me to stomach, however. In spite of this, I decided to attempt something similar to the 20/20 shake from [never home]maker. Because of my aversion to raw carrots, I used 2 carrots instead of 3, and probably quadrupled the amount of peanut butter. I did not add any sweetener like the maple syrup suggested.

While friends could smell the peanut butter mixed with the carrot, all I could smell or taste was the raw carrot flavor. I was able to stomach about half a batch, trying to work on it throughout the whole work day. I was not able to get myself to finish the whole batch, though. The color is really beautiful and striking, pictured below. I would like to make more shakes with nice colors instead of ones that look mostly brown and green.

After my failure with the carrot smoothie, I decided to go back to something more familiar. I made a chocolate/nutella, strawberry, banana, and spinach smoothie. This was the first time I’ve tried using bananas. The banana flavor overwhelmed the other flavors for me, so I will probably use less banana in the future. Overall, though, it was still an enjoyable smoothie.

I wanted to taste the strawberries more, so I forewent the bananas completely today. I also wanted to cut back on using chocolate every time. This smoothie is spinach, strawberry, and peach (from frozen yogurt). The color and visual texture is not very appetizing, but it tastes delicious!

If you would like full recipes of any of the listed smoothies, please let me know!

Since I got my Ninja blender and started following the (never home)maker blog, I’ve been itching to make some smoothies. Last night and this morning I tried out some smoothie recipes inspired by (never home)maker and Lemon Drop.

For dinner and dessert last night, I created my own interpretation of (never home)maker’s Chocolate-Peanut Butter Green Smoothie.

I used the following ingredients:

1/2 cup Yarnell’s blueberry frozen yogurt
2 heaping handfuls of spinach
1 tablespoon Nutella
1 tablespoon peanut butter
2 teaspoons Nesquick
1 cup almond milk

I threw all the ingredients into the blender pitcher for my Ninja, and blended it until smooth. It looked pretty disgusting, and I probably should have taken a picture. It was all green, brown and gloopy. However, it tasted delicious. It pretty much tasted like a peanut butter and chocolate shake. It was a little overly sugary for my taste; probably because I used Nesquick instead of cocoa, Nutella and peanut butter instead of almond butter, and frozen yogurt instead of fresh fruit. I couldn’t taste the spinach at all, in spite of feeling like I’d added a lot to the smoothie.

This morning, I (mostly) ran 3 miles, so I wanted something easy for breakfast after I came home and showered. I had a peach in my refrigerator, as well as more blueberry frozen yogurt and peach frozen yogurt. I wanted to avoid having more chocolate again, so I took my inspiration for this smoothie from Lemon Drop’s Blueberry Peach Smoothie.

I used the following ingredients:

1/4 cup Yarnell’s blueberry frozen yogurt
1/2 cup Yarnell’s peach frozen yogurt
1 cup almond milk
1 peach, pitted and peeled
1 heaping handful of spinach

I figured I couldn’t really taste the spinach in last night’s smoothie, so I’d see if it was just the nut butters covering up the flavor, or if it just integrated well into the smoothies. Granted, I used less spinach this morning compared to last night. Again, I put everything in my Ninja blender pitcher and blended until smooth. It turned out a sickly green color, but again lacked any flavor of spinach. Unsurprisingly, this smoothie mostly tasted like peaches; I could taste very little of the blueberries. It appears to be the frozen yogurt that is contributing pretty heavily to the sweetness as this smoothie was still sweet for my taste. I’ll probably price some fresh and frozen fruit next time I’m at the store to see what I want to pick up for future smoothies.

My takeaways from my experimentation so far:
-Adding spinach to smoothies doesn’t seem to affect the flavor one way or the other, so putting spinach in a smoothie is probably a good way to make it healthier (though it may make it look less appetizing).
-Using frozen yogurt makes smoothies too sweet for my taste; I will try to start using plain fruit instead, with perhaps some plain yogurt for thickness.
-Putting nut butters in smoothies makes them really rich, and quite delicious!

A coworker friend of mine named Thomas has a large garden, and has been working on canning some of what he’s grown! He was kind enough to share homemade salsa, canned jalapeños, and jalapeño peach jelly. I believe everything was grown in his garden except the peaches.

As you can see, I have already enjoyed a good portion of the jalapeño peach jelly. I’ve been having it on whole wheat bread with neufchâtel.

Thomas has started a blog about his gardening and canning efforts. Check him out at Farmer Stamps.