 |
| I'm a fricken breakfast artist |
Whole30 requires ½ of every meal to be vegetables, which can be tough at breakfast. There’s only so many days you can eat scrambled eggs and sautéed spinach until you feel dead inside. Enter: the smoothie. The perfect vessel for protein and vegetables masked in the delicious taste of fruit. I hate drinking meals, so I eat my smoothies with a spoon out of a bowl and I top them with fresh fruit and chopped nuts and chia seeds, for a symphony of textures.
The secret to the perfect smoothie is starting with frozen fruit. I keep a gallon-size bag of peeled and cut ripe bananas in my freezer at all times, plus some bags of frozen blueberries or strawberries from Trader Joe’s. Unflavored all-natural whey protein gives smoothies a creamy texture and adds a huge punch of protein. And lest we not forget the most important ingredient: a ton of spinach. A good rule of thumb is to look at your blender before you blend: your ratio of fruit to spinach should be 1:3, so that you know you’re getting a good amount of veggies. But don’t worry: the smoothie will taste good.
Here’s a “recipe” for a standard smoothie bowl:
• 2/3 cup frozen berries
• ½ scoop unflavored whey protein
• A spoonful of yogurt or a splash of keifer, if desired
• The rest of the blender full of fresh or frozen spinach
• Enough water to almost cover the berries
 |
| Smoothie (pre-liquid) to show the whole30 police that it is in fact over half spinach |
Blend it! It should be pretty thick to hold up the toppings.
Toppings:
• 2 tbs chopped almonds
• ½ fresh banana, sliced
• A handful of blackberries and raspberries
• 2 tbs chia seeds
Some people will top smoothies with coconut, honey, or granola, but smoothies are already pretty high sugar and I’m trying to do less of that. People think granola is healthy but it’s really high in fat and sugar. Swap it out for chopped nuts instead—you keep the crunch and the healthy fat but lose the added sugar.
My rough calculation for the total cost of this smoothie is about $3.20, which is more than most of my meals but WAY less than the $12 you would pay for something like this in a cafe here in LA.
Be creative! Let me know what combination of fruit you like best in your smoothies.