My New favorite Smoothie Recipe-PB&J

So a few months ago my roommate pulled out my old blender and started playing around with some smoothie ideas. I gotta say too that he's quite good with some of the recipes. For instance, he's been playing around a lot with green and black tea bases for his smoothies that give them a really interesting taste. If you've never tried anything like that before I definitely suggest giving it a shot. I'd take out the yogurt though.

A couple days ago I was at the farmers market and the had blackberries very cheap so I got a few containers. Normally I'm not a big fan of blackberries but they were like $1.50 per 6 ounce container and I knew I could find something to do with them.

The first container was used over a couple bowls of my famous cereal concoctions. For those who haven't seen my cereal recipes, it usually has two types of cereal, kefir as opposed to milk, and about 5 other ingredients like nuts, seeds, and random fruit. Its always a production. Lately I've been on an amaranth flake and granola base, almonds, pumpkin seed, flax seed, sliced apples, and blueberries kick. Oh and don't forget the organic plain kefir or yogurt instead of milk. It makes all the difference.

OK back to my story. So its been about 4 days now since I bought these blackberries and I have the second pack sitting in their completely untouched. I knew they had to be used quickly but I wasn't sure how. It seemed the obvious answer would be the blender. Problem was that I had almost no other fruit other than bananas and apples and I'm not a huge fan of apple peel in my smoothies, Yes I know I could peel it but I hate throwing away nutrients.

Anyway, I thought about it last night and wasn't sure about a banana blackberry smoothie but when I woke up this morning, it seemed like a great idea for some reason. Seemed to me that the banana would serve to mellow out the tart blackberries so I tried it. At first I put in the banana and then I dumped in the whole package of blackberries. Next for a liquid base I put in some kefir (if you don't know, kefir is like a liquid yogurt beverage which is extremely healthy and is a better pro-biotic source than yogurt. You can find it in specialty shops and health food stores).

Now if you've every used blackberries in a smoothie you know the amazing deep purple that comes from it. An entire package of blackberries was fun to watch. Once that was done I tried it and it was great but since it was breakfast, I knew I needed some fat and protein. Next I added 3 tbl sp natural peanut butter, 1 tbl sp of olive oil, and one scoop of whey protein.  

It was thick, but it taste kind of ;ie a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a glass! I gotta say I really loved it. Tastes great, high calories, high protein, and very dense in vitamins and minerals.

 
Recipe

1 med banana

6 oz fresh blackberries

3 tbl sp natural peanut butter

1 tbl sp olive oil (optional with pb)

3 oz yogurt of kefir (I like kefir)

1 scoop (28g) whey protein.

Appx 725 calories, 40g healthy fat, 60 g carbs (15g of the fiber), 45g protein, super high vitamin and mineral content.

If you're trying to keep a lower calorie diet of you're concerned about the fat, you could by all means drop the olive oil and lower the amount of peanut butter to 2tbl sp. Personally I love peanut butter so I add more but its up to you. Feel free to play with the recipe anyway you'd like. If you have a better one or just a favorite of your own, please post it in the comments below. Oh and play with the tea thing. It really has some interesting potential.

For those of you that are into the smoothie game and looking for some new killer recipes, Craig Ballantyne (writes for fitness mags and authored the Turbulence Training series) just brought out a smoothie recipe book of his favorite ULTRA-HEALTHY mixes and I gotta tell you, of the five I've tried so far, they are freakin delicious. Before I say anymore, its not free. Its like $20 but the recipes are worth it.

I know you can get them for free online all over the place but honestly, I've seen people say that Dunkin' Donuts Coolatte or whatever it's called is healthy based on the nutrition facts on the website only to go look at it myself and be horrified by its over 100g of sugar and other ridiculousness. Therefore, I really don't trust what random internet people say is healthy. On the other hand, I know Craig actually knows what healthy is so I don't have to take ten minutes to verify each recipe.

Anyway, I picked it up for the recipes, but the rest of the book is pretty awesome also. Actually I was pretty surprised because here's this fitness and health guru that writes for the magazines that is handing you his exact weekly grocery list and telling you EXACTLY what he eats each day and why.

I mean honestly, seeing exactly what one of the top fitness guys on the planet does for himself each day to keep his year around six pack is really the Holy Grail of nutrition information. So I was pretty shocked to see it just be thrown in with a $20 ebook. There's some other stuff as well like information on staying naturally detoxed without crazy 11 day liquid diets, how to schedule in pizza and ice cream days so they don't sabotage you, how you can actually eat enough carbs to keep you more than satisfied and still actually keep your weight loss on track and some other stuff.

Anyway, I highly recommend you grab a copy. The information in there is well worth the $20 even if you're not trying to lose weight and the smoothie recipes are awesome. Oh and let me know if you make my PB&J smoothie or if you perfect it. I only did it this once so its certainly not perfect yet but it was good and I think I'm on to something.

 

Until next time,

Kris

 

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Comments

[Puma Clyde]

These look great! I recently read a recipe in Bon Appetit that added a huge pat of butter to the inside of a burger! I'm glad to see something that doesn't rely on so much fat for flavor, haha.

[oakley sunglasses]

#$@#@$#$!^actually i just want to be with you in the future but you never get me any chance,so sad!!#%#%

[Daily Calorie Intake]

peanut butter, olive oil... ouch! so much fat!) and... gosh, look at this: 725 calories!!! one glass of it and I'm dismissed for the rest of the day:)