Making Better Smoothies

My boyfriend and I have been on a huge smoothie kick lately.  I love them because I feel like they keep me from wanting junk food so badly, and because it’s easy to pack them full of good for you foods.  My favorite of which is chia seeds (a type of grass seed, I kid you not).

We get the chia seeds at Whole Foods, and I put about a teaspoon in each smoothie because they are a good source of fiber, calcium, protein, and they have an astounding about of omega 3’s. (On top of all that they are rumored to help with weigh loss…never a bad thing when one loves smoothies!)

The seeds are amazing. If given 15 minutes or so in a liquid they will form a jelly coating on the outside of each seed and soak in what ever flavor they are submersed in.

After weeks of chia seeds mixed into our drinks my boyfriend got bold and suggested we try adding kale and chard to our smoothies too…which made them a funny color, but you couldn’t taste the leafy greens at all.  After a while I got tired of seeing my beautifly colored smoothies twisted into a strange unnatural color so we replaced the fresh leafy greens with GreenSuperFood…this stuff is quite expensive, and it tastes/smells AWEFUL, but it’s a powder that is packed with the nutriance from a wide variety of greens such as alfalfa and wheat grass…we only add 1/8^th of a serving to each smoothie since it has such a strong taste but I feel like anything is better than nothing.

And lastly, as I’ve mentioned before, in my opinion a smoothie must be served with a straw. However, we were drinking so many smoothies that I felt like we were creating a lot of trash with our straws, so we invested in metal straws.  The only catch is that it’s best to rinse the straw immediately after you use it, so food partials don’t dry inside the straw.  But the four pack of straws that we bought came with a little wire brush for cleaning the insides, so even if we fail on the rinsing, the straw is not destroyed.

My favorite smoothie recipe:

(which is great after working out because it is packed with protein and calcium and a little sugar for a great pick-me-up)

-          8 strawberries, hulled (or 4 strawberries and half a cup of frozen blueberries)

-          ½ cup of low fat milk

-          ½ cup of greek yogurt

-          3 tablespoons of white sugar

-          2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

-          and six ice cubes

-          ¼ of a scoop of GreenSuperFood (not necessary, it’s just what we do)

Blend all ingredients together, then top with chia seeds after pouring into drinking glasses (if you put the chia seeds in your blender it will be very difficult to wash them out of the blender so I like to add them as the very last step)