Cooking Experiment: Strawberry/Banana/Carrots Smoothie

[tuftears]

No pictures because, well, a picture of a reddish-white liquid is fairly uninspiring!

After some thinking about it, I finally picked up a Ninja blender from CostCo-- it doubles as a food processor!-- and some strawberries, bananas, and a container of plain Greek yogurt. I also secured some wheat germ from Safeway, along with another couple pounds of carrots.

After washing the blender parts, I shredded the carrots in the food processor, then trimmed the strawberries, made those into a puree, tossed in three of the bananas, added a thin layer of wheat germ, then finally put in half the container of yogurt and blended that all together. This made 72 ounces of some reddish-white liquid.

I determined that the mixture was too warm to tempting, so I decanted it into three bottles, 24 ounces each, and stored them in the refrigerator.

Verdict? Not quite sweet enough, though texture-wise it's plausible. I think the CostCo strawberries may be force-grown, they looked white on parts. I need to look for some 'real' strawberries that should be much sweeter.

So, any smoothie recipes y'all want to share? Suggestions where to buy good fruit?

Comments

[anher.livejournal.com]

We tend to pick up frozen fruit when we make smoothies and our selections we've donr mangos, peaches, dark cherries, and strawberries.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'd guess you have to thaw 'em out, probably by putting them into the refrigerator? What else goes into your smoothies?

[anher.livejournal.com]

Nope, straight from the freezer into the blender for the fruit. Though I can understand thawing them out some too.

We also add in fruit juice (typically orange, but pick your preference) and generally a piece of fresh fruit (a banana is typical). We've added Fage Greek Yogurt (the whole milk version) before.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Good to know blenders can handle frozen fruit! Makes it a lot easier and means I can store frozen fruit for the task for weeks at a time.

[anher.livejournal.com]

True, but if you use frozen fruit you definitely want to add some sort of liquid or similar item to the mix.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'd probably use the Greek yogurt for the 'working liquid' but I'm a bit confused why you need liquid to get it going?

[anher.livejournal.com]

For us it helps keep the chunks of frozen fruit in a workable condition, but then again your mixer is a bit more heavy duty than ours, so YMMV.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how 'heavy duty' it counts as, honestly, but I'll just have to experiment and see! I very rarely ever use blenders so this is a learning experience.

[sassinak.livejournal.com]

I really like the frozen strawberries from Costco for smoothies. I also break up and freeze over-ripe bananas to use in smoothies. And it looks weird, but a handful of baby spinach in soothies cannot even be tasted.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I figured the carrots would work 'cause they're basically sweet. :) How do you buy (and store) your spinach? I've only bought it from stores when I want to make quiches or steamed eggs with spinach, and then I buy one of their 1-pound boxes of baby spinach and cook that all at once. Spinach seems pretty space-inefficient.

[sassinak.livejournal.com]

I buy pre-washed spinach packed in bags. I use what I can in 2 or 3 days, then toss the rest of the bag in the freezer. Take the bag out of the freezer in a few hours and crush it by gently hitting the bag. It works great in smoothies straight from the freezer, also in quiche.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Handy tip! Where do you buy spinach in bags, and what size bags? The biggest containers I've seen are one-pound boxes of baby spinach, at Safeway's.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a recipe by a webcomic artist (which explains the name of the drink). Apparently, "Ridley's Weed Pulp" is quite tasty, despite looking exactly like what the name implies. Near as I can tell, it's a typical blended fruit drink with about 2 c of spinach tossed in.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Heehee. ^_^ Yeah, I could see that. Carrots also don't add that unfortunate green color to the smoothie, which is why I used them as the veggie for this round.