Adding greens to smoothies is, as I'm sure you've heard already, a great way to increase your consumption of those health miracle greens. I drink a green smoothie just about every morning. One version I invented is savory and uses spicy V8 juice. I like berries immensely and they make a delicious and refreshing drink. I've done a bit of experimenting with random ingredients (not a big fan of raw beets or romaine lettuce in my blender breakfast, by the way.) In my opinion, to make a tasty smoothie, you need something frozen and something with a little fat in it to make it creamy. Avocado or nuts can be good creamy ingredient for savory shakes. Banana is great for sweet ones. Until yesterday, I had never used peaches. I'm so glad a bag of the frozen beauties snuck their way into my freezer! I'm happy to share this recipe with you. However... This recipe comes with three warnings: 1) If you've never used kale in a smoothie, substitute spinach instead. Kale is very good for you, but I have to admit the first time I put it in a smoothie I likened the experience to glurping down grass clippings. Yes, glurping. No lie. Spinach is also quite healthy and it liquifies in the blender. Kale just gets littler and littler. I recommend easing into the green smoothie experience with spinach, a more blender-friendly green. 2) If you have never used protein powder before, don't start with this recipe. I mean, you can, but I'd hate for you to decide that my green smoothies have a gritty or chalky taste as a function of their greenness. I started using a protein powder about a year ago to boost my, well, protein. Duh, right? I read somewhere about balance between the macronutrients of protein, carbs and fats and decided as a nearly vegan vegetarian that I could use some more grams of protein. After trying probably half a dozen varieties, I have decided I like the unflavored Garden of Life Raw Protein powder. I prefer it because it does not have artificial sweeteners or added sugar (which means I can put it in sweet and savory smoothies), it doesn't contain dairy, it has 17 grams of protein per serving, and it is of course gluten-free. It's also loaded with other good stuff that I liken to taking a nutritional supplement. Those good points don't change the inherent nature that makes protein powder a rather distinctive and to many, unpleasant, beverage additive. I think the taste is tolerable and the health benefits trump my tastebuds. You can easily leave it out of this recipe. 3) I do not really measure my smoothie ingredients. I usually make them early in the morning. I throw ingredients at the blender and see what happens. Quantities below are estimates. Please don't get mad if it's a little off. Always adjust to your own tastes. Start with less greens if they make you nervous. Use more almond milk if you prefer a thinner beverage. Experimenting can be fun. Let me know what you came up with! Ingredients: 1 cup plain unsweetened almond milk 1 cup frozen kale 1/2 cup frozen peaches 1 medium banana 1 teaspoon of toasted flaxseeds (the ones from Trader Joe's are delicious!) 1 scoop of protein powder Pour the almond milk and kale into the blender. Pulse and blend on high until it's a liquid. Add the rest of the ingredients a little at a time, blending after each addition. Once everything is in the blender and moving, keep blending for a 90 seconds or 2 minutes (this will feel like forever, especially if you are blending in the pre-dawn hours and everyone else in your house is still sleeping.) Pour the contents into a glass. Drink it through a straw. Feel very satisfied and secretly nutritionally morally superior to people eating Corn Chex. Take a picture and post it on Facebook. [May is Celiac Awareness Month, and I’m giving away copies of my ecookbooklet: So What CAN You Eat? Gluten-free Paleo Vegan (mostly) Recipes for Health and Weight Loss, to all who join the mailing list. Visit the homepage here.
19 fast, easy recipes!] 1) I'm cooking most of my own food, so I know what goes into it 2) I'm more likely to just get a salad (with dressing on the side) when I eat at a restaurant that doesn't have a gluten-free menu, helping me meet my weight management goals 3) I can't succumb to the temptation of workplace pizza or doughnuts when they appear 4) I'm more mindful of the nutritients and calories I'm putting into my body 5) I've gotten to experiment with new foods and have found some new things to add to my list of favorites, and they are healthy (Beets! Brussels sprouts!) 6) I've befriended nutritional yeast as a replacement for some of the B vitamins I lost with enriched carbs, and I LOVE it! 7) I've come up with new ways to prepare vegetables and make them satisfying as the MAIN dish 8) I've begun using condiments in interesting ways (yellow mustard on broccoli is delicious!) 9) Nuts and beans are great protein sources, AND they make good dips, spreads and hummuses (or is that hummi?) 10) (This should be number 1!) I generally feel so much better and have so much more energy! What gifts have you found from having to live gluten-free? Last night's No Starch Stirfry Cauliflower, broccoli, a red pepper past it prime, mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, and a tablespoon of walnuts, sauteed in a tablespoon of olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook it til you're bored. Include onions and add gf soy sauce and serve over rice for a more traditional stirfry. Personally, I'm working on minimizing grains, and the great taste is driven by the veggies. Make a lot and enjoy! I was so taken with the attractiveness of my dinner last night that I snapped a picture of it and shared in on Twitter in a short conversation with @gfdougie (who also has a helpful blog: http://glutenfreetip.com/). I was flattered when he asked for the recipe, because it is essentially just fresh vegetables cut up and and a tablespoon of chopped walnuts sauteed in a little olive oil in a non-stick pan with some Trader Joe's smoked sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and sometimes (but not last night) I throw on some nutritional yeast. If you are thinking "I could never take the time to chop all those veggies," here are some tricks:
1) Buy them already cut up if possible. Produce Junction sells bags of broccoli florets. It's easy to find mushrooms already sliced. A nutritionist friend of mine suggested this to me a long time ago, and I felt strangely freed from the guilt of not doing all the chopping myself. 2) Since many fresh veggies are fine eaten raw, chop them big (which goes much faster) and cook them longer or shorter depending on your patience level. This won't work for folks who have trouble with raw veggies, but I find them most enjoyable when there is still some structure left to them. Not crunchy exactly, but that place between crunchy and soft. "Cook it til you're bored" is a common phrase in our house for recipes. 3) See my blog post on Beans and Greens (another common go-to dinner in my house) for other ideas for seasonings to keep things interesting. Keep it easy! I've recently become a BIG FAN of Kind Bars -- nutty and fruity and I want to eat them like candy bars. Hundreds of calories consumed in less than a minute. I need to stay away from them. Fortunately there are many options. Since we're loaded with post-Easter hardboiled eggs around here, I thought it would be a good time to share my video with tips for fast, easy, cheap, healthy gluten free snacks and breakfasts. Your tips? I went to another Philadelphia gluten free potluck this afternoon. As usual, it was a lot of fun -- casual, low-key and there was lots of great gluten free fare. I took oven roasted veggies, and they turned out really well, so I'm sharing the recipe. You can see that I'm not a precision cook. If that makes you nervous and you want more specifics, let me know and I'm sure I can come up with something. If you think you don't like Brussels sprouts, you really owe it to yourself to try them like this. Get some fresh ones, cut the bottoms off of them, cut them in bite-sized chunks and include them. Really. You won't believe how good they are. I'm not kidding. Nutritional yeast may also be unfamiliar. It is savory -- it is a umami seasoning (the 5th taste, along with sweet, sour, salty and bitter.) It's loaded with vitamin B6 and is a complete protein. But never mind that, it makes a great seasoning and can easily be used in place of parmasan cheese. Enjoy! Oven Roasted veggies Preheat the oven to 375. Our oven is hinky, so precision isn't necessary. I'd say today's batch hovered somewhere between 350 and 400 degrees. Cut up the vegetables. Many kinds will work. I have used beets, mushrooms, sweet potatoes and others in addition to today's combination listed here. Ingredients: Random quantities of the following fresh veggies based on taste and availability, cut in smallish bite-sized chunks: Brussels sprouts (little leaves of the Brussels sprouts will fall off when you cut them up. Include them in the roasting. They crisp up and are very tasty!) Cauliflower Broccoli Carrots Potato (I wash them well and leave the skins on) Red Bell Pepper Onion Put the chucks in a big bowl, drizzle them with enough olive oil to lightly coat them and stir it all up. Spread it on a baking sheet one layer deep. Put it in the hot oven for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through. Check toward the end of the time to make sure they aren't getting overdone or burning to the pan. It's okay if the little leaves of loose Brussels sprouts get a little burned, and some of the chunks of vegetables will likely get a browned on one side, and sometimes the little bits on the end of broccoli get toasty. This is all perfectly fine and adds to the taste. Remove the veggies from the oven. While they are still hot, put them in a bowl, season with freshly ground smoked sea salt (or regular salt is fine, or if you can't do salt, then they are still good anyway -- experiment with seasonings you like) and black pepper to taste. Then sprinkle with a spoonful or two of nutritional yeast. The yeast flakes sort of melt down and stick to the hot veggies. Start with a little if you've never had it before. Taste it and add more seasonings or yeast as you are so moved. Eat hot or at room temperature and then marvel at how good the Brussels sprouts are. Tell everyone. The picture of these vegetables was before they were roasted, but I thought it would be helpful to show the size of the pieces. The yeast flakes come in a big canister, and the Trader Joes smoked sea salt comes in a regular sized grinder. Illustrations not drawn to scale. :-) |
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