This is my favourite post-workout snack. No long intro, here goes:
Ingredients
- 350ml cold water
- 1 small banana
- 75g blueberries (frozen is better)
- A teaspoon of cacao/cocoa
- A generous dumping of chia seeds
- Vanilla vegan protein
- Sponsored: A spoon of greens powder (or just chuck in some spinach)
- Optional: Couple of dates for sweetness
- Optional: A teaspoon of flax seeds or similar
- Optional: A couple of almonds or walnuts
- Optional: A handful of mint to add a bit of zing
Without the optional extras you’re looking at about 1600 kilojoules, so tweak accordingly.
Method
- Just blend it.
My blender manual suggests liquids first, then fresh fruit, seeds and powders, finally the frozen stuff.
Why I like it
The sweetness from the banana with the flavour from the blueberries, a bit of an icy texture along with some thickness from the chia seeds makes this a fresh and tasty smoothie for a hot day. It’s perfect when you just get back from a workout.
The backstory
There used to be n acai bowl place downstairs at work called “Kiss the Berry,” a name I always hated because it just sounds euphemistic and you can find literally anything on Urban Dictionary.
Nevertheless I used to enjoy working out in the mornings, riding into work, and picking up a protein smoothie from KTB to start my day. Nothing better.
Many years later I’d moved overseas, come back, and then one day I figured I’d start experimenting to try to recreate the magic. And I don’t know if this is that close, but it’s delicious for sure.
Nutrition and justifying my choices
It’s important to have a variety of stuff in your diet, so I like to throw in various seeds and nuts and fruits which disappear into the mix without affecting the flavour too much. I’ve mostly been putting stuff in that sounds good based on things I think I’ve heard sometime. But I just went on Wikipedia and fact-checked myself and here’s what I found:
The chia seeds (and flax seeds) are a good source of omega 3s which are important fats that are tricky to get. I don’t think they’re as good as fish oils, but they’re also a source of fibre and various vitamins and minerals. And I stupidly bought a kilo of flaxseeds from Costco that time so I’ve got to get through them somehow.
Nuts are high in calories, but they’re also good for you so what better time to smash them than after a workout. I bought some walnuts and decided I don’t especially like the taste of walnuts (also omega 3s), so I threw them in on a whim one day and then kept doing it.
Spinach is obviously a green and is generally good. But it’s the weak point here: It doesn’t blend amazingly well and if you add too much you can definitely taste it. But it’s a great way to get rid of a bag of leaves going unloved in your fridge, and I find pre-blending it and turning it into green hulklike ice cubes works best for me.
I have no idea if the greens powders you can get from your average pharmacy/snake oil salesman are actually worth a damn, and I’d suspect probably not. But they’re easy and generally have sweeteners in them to give the smoothie a bit of a lift.
I really like Bulk Nutrients Earth Protein for no reason other than it’s the first one I tried and it’s pretty good. Vegan protein is unlike whey protein, in that you should look for a mix of (usually) rice and pea protein to get a full amino acid profile. Though you can buy them separately, neither are complete on their own. I just find vegan protein blends super well to make a nice refreshing water-based smoothie, whereas whey doesn’t. When I accidentally put whey protein in, it all goes terribly wrong and somehow turns fluffy, it’s not good.
Other stuff I’ve included at various times:
- a shot of espresso, back when I was a caffeine junkie. It wasn’t great tbh. Granulated coffee works better.
- mango chunks — you can buy a big bag of it frozen. Sometimes when I’m out of blubes I’ll turn it into a full-on mango smoothie and it’s not as good, but one does what one must.
- spaghetti – spaghetti? No, you must be mistaken, I didn’t say that.
- mint – the original smoothie from the place downstairs was a ‘mint slice’, heavy on the mint and cocoa. I can’t grow mint because I live in darkness, but occasionally I’ll buy it special, and it’s really good.
- dates – they’re good to add some sweetness when the bananas aren’t super ripe but they’re pretty calorific so make your judgements
That’s about it. Do you have a favourite smoothie?