Saturday, November 3, 2012

What's for Breakfast? Fruit Smoothies

Now that I'm cutting back on calories during the Healthy Challenge, I'm loving my fruit smoothies in the morning. (Healthy Challenge forms here, if you want to start your own.)

All of the following recipes were adapted from the smoothie recipes in Clean by Alejandro Junger.

I cut the recipes in half, since Mark is still enjoying our yummy brown rice breakfasts in the morning.

My favorite is the...hmmm...I have several favorites! Even the Green Smoothie is delicious. If I had to choose my absolute favorite though, it would be the "Blueberry, Almond, and Cocoa Smoothie." But I really do take turns with all of them. They are all so good. Maybe I do have the one with cocoa in it just a little more often.

A note about making smoothies: I have a normal (cheap-o) blender. I used to hate making smoothies because I had to break up the ice cubes with a hammer ahead of time, or the ice wouldn't get all ground up. Translation: too much trouble. I was not a smoothie girl.

Then I bought one of these awesome mini ice cube trays:
Love it.
No more troubles with the big fat ice cubes. Easy-peasy smoothies. Life is good. 

One more note: Of course you can substitute pretty much any kind of fruit. Lately I haven't been able to find frozen mango chunks, so I'm substituting frozen peaches. I also use frozen strawberries instead of raspberries. You knew all that already, of course.

Now for the recipes. I'm giving you the Weight Watcher's points on the Points Plus system for each recipe (1 serving - don't cheat) because that's how I roll.


Smoothies 
(All recipes are 2 servings each)

Green Smoothie (2 WW points)
1 ½ cups of almond milk
½ cup coconut milk
2 leaves kale, coarsely chopped
¼ avocado
½ cup mango chunks
½ cup ice

Mango and Coconut Milk Smoothie (3 WW points)
1 cup mango chunks
½ cup pineapple chunks
1 ½ cups coconut milk
1-2 tsp agave nectar
½ cup ice

Blueberry, Cocoa, and Almond Milk Smoothie (2 WW points)
1 cup blueberries
1 ½ cups almond milk
1-2 tsp agave nectar
2 tsp raw cocoa powder
½ cup ice

Energy Smoothie with Almond Butter and Cardamom (5 WW points)
1 Tbl almond butter
1 tsp ground cardamom powder
1 ½ cups almond milk
1 cup frozen peaches
1-2 tsp agave nectar
½ cup ice

Berry Smoothie with Coconut Milk and Cinnamon (3 WW points)
2 cups mixed blueberries & raspberries
1 ½ cups coconut milk
¼ avocado
1 tsp cinnamon
1-2 tsp agave nectar
½ cup ice

Tropical Smoothie (3 WW points)
1 ½ cups pineapple and mango chunks
2 Tbl passion fruit puree (freeze in ice cube tray)
1 ½ cups almond milk
½ cup ice

3 comments:

Dorothy said...

Ken has been having smoothies every morning, too. He adds great big scoops of peanut butter or protein powder to kick it up a notch. He doesn't use ice cubes, but most of his fruit is frozen, except there's always a fresh banana that he throws in. I'm not crazy about his recipies, though. My latest favorite breakfast is a hot bowl of quinoa with dried fruit and sunflower seeds. :)

Katie Lewis said...

Mmm. Everything sounds good right now.

Unknown said...

Trader Joe's is my go-to place for inexpensive, good and consistent frozen mangos. :-)

Looks like lots of yummy things!