My Morning Smoothie

I know that when I read blogs I really like seeing what other people eat, maybe it's weird and maybe it's just me but judging by the number of food bloggers in the world I would guess that I'm not alone in this. So, I thought I'd share with you what a typical breakfast looks like for me. Now, I alternate between a smoothie, eggs & bacon, and sometimes a Larabar if I'm in a real hurry. Since it's summertime smoothies have been winning lately :)

I recently purchased a magic bullet and it has taken my smoothie making to a whole new level. Totally worth the money! I generally start each smoothie with frozen fruit (organic of course). On this particular day I used strawberries, blueberries and mango. I have found that I am not a fan of blackberries or raspberries in my smoothie. Blackberries leave yucky seeds and raspberries tend to upset me tummy. I have also used a tropical blend which included banana, strawberry and mango and while I'm not a huge fan of banana in the smoothie this one turned out pretty darn tasty. To add a little additional sweetness to my smoothie I also add a spoonful of crushed pineapple to my smoothies and when I have it I'll add a handful of spinach. With the pineapple added in you really don't taste the spinach, I promise!

 

In addition to my fruit I also add in some fish oil. Now, before you groan about fish burps and what not let me just tell you that high quality fish oil is flavorless. I buy Carlson's fish oil with orange zest, they also have a lemon version. The flavor comes from the orange peel so there is no sugar just a nice citrusy taste and smell. It's pricey but you really do get what you pay for and after having taken cheap fish oil capsules while doing South Beach back in '04 I will gladly pay for my giant bottle.

Now, in order to get things going you are going to need some liquid. If I used fresh fruit I wouldn't need nearly as much liquid but with frozen fruit you want a good amount of liquid. I've use a variety of things for my liquid. Almond milk is ok but I didn't love the flavor combination, I hate yogurt in a smoothie (not sure why but that's my feeling), I've added straight water which is refreshing, lately I've been using this coconut milk. With the pineapple and strawberry and mango it makes for a nice refreshing tropical smoothie. I ran out of my carton coconut milk a week ago and so I opened up a can and just added some water to thin it our and it worked great and was probably significantly cheaper than the carton but since the husband uses this in his coffee I try to keep some on hand.

I put in enough liquid to cover the fruit and other ingredients. I have sometimes had to add more liquid halfway through because it gets stuck but I like my smoothies on the thick side.

Once you've got all of the ingredients in just twist on your blade and pop it in the Magic Bullet and let it go for a few minutes. It doesn't take long! I like to drink mine with a bendy straw straight out of the mixer cup and I'm generally too lazy to put the colorful ring around the top to make it pretty!

There you have it, my morning smoothie.This would make a great night time snack too. Now, this is pretty high in carbs for anyone who is looking to reduce their carbs or for those who are primal but you could use only berries and put in more veggies. I've been thinking cucumber would make and excellent smoothie. I love to have these on a running day to give me the energy to get through a tough run. They are better than a GU and taste so much better too!

Homemade Fruit Leather

I was having a tough time finding grass-fed, organic jerky made with no soy or sugar, so, what's a gal to do? Buy a dehydrator and make your own! Now, I did play around with some recipes for homemade venison jerky but I'm still working on perfecting the recipe, it's not quite ready for prime time so I thought I'd share a simple and tasty sweet treat. I made peach fruit leather and it turned out darn tasty!

I started with a bag of frozen organic peaches since it was early March and the farmer's market wasn't open yet. I also used a half cup of unsweetened apple sauce for texture and sweetness.

 First step was to thaw out the peaches (I didn't quite get them all the way thawed since I was impatient). The second step was to put the peaches and apple sauce in my mini chopper and went to town. I ended up with a nice smooth and quite tasty mixture that I would totally feed to a baby if I were to have a baby.



 The next step is to prepare the dehydrator. I found out the hard way that you need to grease the fruit leather insert. I chose to use some coconut oil since I'm paleo and vegetable spray is not so paleo.


 I simply smeared it on with a paper towel. An added bonus was the added flavor of coconut!

 Once the dehydrator was ready I spread the puree into a nice uniform thickness.  Once it was looking all pretty and smooth I put it in the dehydrator, plugged it in and set it on one of the medium temps. It took about 4 hours to fully dehydrate. Since I had multiple trays in at once I stopped it periodically and moved the trays around (I was using plastic wrap on some trays so the air flow wasn't ideal). The result was irregular shaped but very tasty peach fruit leather! It would have been great if it had been all perfectly rectangular or round but that's not what you get with a round dehydrator.

I've heard that you can do this in a regular oven in which case you could get your nice neat shapes. I also experimented with berry's but found the seeds to be a problem. If I do blackberry or raspberry again I'll strain them to get all of the seeds out. I also used made a batch using a "tropical blend" with banana, strawberry, mango and some applesauce and that was darn tasty. For my next batch I'm thinking strawberry and pineapple! I'll let you know how it goes :)