Showing posts with label Smoothies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Smoothies. Show all posts

Friday, April 15, 2011

Energizing Smoothie...

Riding the waves of yesterday's news, I woke up feeling sad, tired, and not wanting to eat. However, with all of my training, I really need to eat lots of healthy food for fuel and I knew a smoothie was just the ticket.

I blended:

1 frozen banana
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
3/4 cup vanilla coconut milk
small handful of ice

And then I added a ton of supplements to boost my mood and energy:
1 tsp bee pollen (to fight allergies)
1 tsp spirulina (for energy and mental clarity)
1 tsp lecithin (for energy and clarity)
1/2 scoop Amazing Grass powder (for energy and greens)
1 tbsp flax
1 tsp chia seeds

The smoothie tastes fantastic (hello vanilla coconut milk!) and I hope it will give me all that I need to tackle, and enjoy my day.


I read yesterday about chia seeds on Tina's Carrots "n" Cake blog. I know they are great for you, but this excerpt from "Born to Run" really sums it up well:

In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone. As tiny as those seeds are, they’re superpacked with omega-3s, omega-6s, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, fiber, and antioxidants. If you had to pick just one desert-island food, you wouldn’t do much better than chia, at least if you were interested in building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease; after a few months on the chia diet, you could probably swim home.

So...go out and get yourself some chia seeds! They taste great sprinkled on everything from salads to pancakes to granola...or you can just blend them into your smoothies....

Monday, January 10, 2011

Smoothies are a nutritional gold mine!

Good morning! Dawn from Florida Coastal Cooking shared a cool website with me...Spark Recipes. It is free and calculates the build up of your recipes. It's not exact because some of the things I used were not listed (it looks like you can add information about your favorite products too!) but this is a general idea.

I made a smoothie this morning and while I know they are good for me, I was shocked at HOW good they are for me!

This morning my smoothie included the following. (NL means the product was not listed on Spark Recipe so I had to improvise...but I think it's pretty close).

1 cup fresh spinach
3/4 cup frozen blueberries
1 frozen banana
1 TBSP flax meal
1 TBSP Peanut Flour (NL)
1 tsp bee pollen (NL)
1 cup hemp milk (I added this one in, although it does not allow a spot for Omega 3 ALA, and my hemp milk has 46% the daily recommended amount)

While my smoothie was high in calories, it is extremely high in nutrition too! look at this!

Calories479.4
  Total Fat19.4 g
     Saturated Fat2.6 g
     Polyunsaturated Fat10.3 g
     Monounsaturated Fat5.7 g
  Cholesterol0.0 mg
  Sodium236.1 mg
  Potassium1,002.5 mg
  Total Carbohydrate73.8 g
     Dietary Fiber12.6 g
     Sugars40.8 g
  Protein12.7 g
  Vitamin A69.6 %
  Vitamin B-1220.0 %
  Vitamin B-645.2 %
  Vitamin C38.4 %
  Vitamin D15.0 %
  Vitamin E20.1 %
  Calcium42.5 %
  Copper11.7 %
  Folate25.7 %
  Iron21.7 %
  Magnesium22.8 %
  Manganese37.5 %
  Niacin19.0 %
  Pantothenic Acid    6.5 %
  Phosphorus    11.4 %
  Riboflavin14.7 %
  Selenium4.1 %
  Thiamin9.2 %
  Zinc6.2 %


Not a bad way to start a Monday! Have a great week, everyone!