Saturday, 26 May 2012

Housemate smoothie (again)

I have several posts on housemate's smoothie preparation, because I change it up every once in a while.   The ingredients are pretty stable, but my preparation method has evolved.  I used to prepare a whole week's worth on the weekend and freeze them as described here.  That has two problems:  1) after thawing, they just don't taste as good as when they are freshly prepared!  maybe it's that 12 hours in the fridge thawing makes them lose their freshness a bit; or maybe it's the freezing process  2) there's usually a bit of leftover for each smoothie which I drink, but when you make 7 of them, that adds up.  So I was overeating on a food that is more than sweet enough for my tastes.

So I've been making the smoothies every day, but doing some weekend food prep to make it easier.  Now I also drink a little bit of the leftover every day but it's a small enough amount that I can just consider it an allowed treat.  plus it's a nice little boost of energy that I usually get before exercising.

Here's what I do on the weekend.  I buy 7 10-oz bags of frozen berries or an equivalent amount of fresh fruit or a mixture.  In most seasons, I go with frozen but in the spring and summer, the fresh berries and grapes are great additions.  I try to include a mixture of berries with some sweet fruit like frozen sweet cherries, grapes, bananas.  Here's all the fruit in a giant bowl:

I feeze that into a large freezer bag.

Each night when I make housemate's fresh squeezed orange juice, I also squeeze 4 oz into this measuring cup, to which I add another 4 oz of grape juice:

Now each morning, assembly goes quick.  Here are all the ingredients:  2 cups of the frozen fruit, seed mixture (in the container with the blue lid), supplements at bottom right, juice, and spinach:


here's the juice, seed mixture, and supplements in the blender pitcher


Add in the spinach


I blend this up first, then add the frozen fruit and blend until smooth.  Here is the final product, served with today's newspaper: