Guys. Seriously. How is it that people can consume Vega smoothie mix?
I’m trying. I really am. And it still tastes like dirt mixed with sweetener. Blech. Come ON, vegans! You can do better!!!
Background here – I’ve started, at least temporarily, eating a soy-, wheat-, and dairy-free diet. Which puts my usual whey protein powder for my occasional breakfast smoothies up on the back shelf for a while. [Side note – a teammate once tried out a new high-protein eating plan and couldn’t figure out why her guts felt like crap. She was lactose intolerant. She didn’t realize that WHEY is derived from dairy. No way? Wheyyyy…]
So naturally it was over to Vega – made from the sounds-as-delicious-as-it-tastes mixture of pea protein and hemp protein. Mmmmmm! gaccckkkk! I’ve made a good go of it, but it wasn’t long before I was looking for alternatives.
Always a fan of just eating real, unprocessed food whenever logistics allow, I came across this great Green Thickies website (links at the bottom) with a zillion homemade protein and meal replacement smoothie recipes. Behold! A gluten-free, raw, no dairy, no soy, protein shake!
From Green Thickies:
Ingredients
Instructions
Blend the ingredients in the following order:
1. Blend the dry ingredients and liquid first for a short time
2. Blend the greens next for a short time (if using)
3. Blend the fruit and the rest of the ingredients until smooth (or as smooth as your blender will allow. High speed blenders may need 2 minutes for a Green Thickie, less powerful blenders may need a lot more, sometimes 5-10 minutes)
Blending this way allows the dry ingredients to be blended for longest, it means the greens will fit in your blender and your fruit gets less blending so it doesn’t become too hot.
– Add more water if required to thin it out.
– Substitute any of the ingredients for whatever you already have.
– If your smoothie is too warm, you can cool it down in the fridge or freeze some of your ingredients before blending. You can also replace half of the liquids with ice. Add the ice at the end. It is better to add frozen ingredients at the end to cool the smoothie down.
How much should I drink to replace a meal?
– This smoothie serves 1 so if you have higher calorie requirements you might need to make more.
Sounds yum, right? guess what – it IS! And it doesn’t taste like you just slid face-first into home plate either.
Moving on in my quest for delicious tasty cheap easy healthy stuff… the energy bar was next on my hit list. This one is from Real Food Real Deals, and mimics one of my favourite store-bought pre-practice snacks, Lara bars. Lara proves that it doesn’t take a lot of junk to make something healthy and tasty – all of their bars have only 4 or 5 ingredients that you could buy yourself at the regular ol’ grocery store. So I was pumped to see a recipe for make-it-yourself Lara-style bars!
WARNING: I have not tried this yet… but I fully intend to. Beat me to it, and tell me how it went in the comments below.
From Real Food Real Deals:
Blueberry Lemon Larabar Recipe
Ingredients:
1½ cups nuts (I used 1¼ cups walnuts and ¼ cup sunflower seeds; pecans or almonds would be good too)
1½ cups dates
½ cup dried blueberries
1 tsp. lemon zest
- If you don’t have dried blueberries, you can dehydrate 2 cup of fresh or frozen berries in the oven. Set the temperature to 175 degrees and bake for 3 to 4 hours. The final product should be chewy.
- Combine all the ingredients in a food processor. Mix together until a paste forms, but don’t process the mixture for so long that you can’t see little specs of each ingredient.
- Line a 9×5 inch loaf pan with wax paper. Press the mixture evenly into the pan.
- Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
- Cut into 18 squares and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Seriously though, I KNOW that I am going to cut these into wayyy fewer pieces than 18. Probably more like 8. And so should you – you’re working hard out there as a Roller Derby Athlete!
SO – like I said, I haven’t tried the Lara bar recipe yet. Try either of these and let me know in the comments what you thought! I want to hear from you!
Links:
I’m a huge green smoothie fan – I have them pretty much every morning. I found a great spinach trick: I buy huge bunches when it’s on sale and wash it all up. Put just the spinach in the blender with a splash of water (not much needed) and blend it into a paste. I then pour it into ice cube trays. That way in the am, I can just throw the cubes in the blender. Helps me save time in the morning, and cash by buying on sale, and ensures the greens are blended extra well.
Holy crap – I LOVE that idea! Thanks Aldera!
That’s genius! I know what I’m doing the next spinach or kale is on sale.
Argh. The next TIME.
I tried the Larabars and they didn’t totally come out well– I don’t have a proper food processor, just a 10-cup puree chopper thing, and I’m guessing it made the difference because it didn’t make a fine enough paste for any of it to bind together even after refrigeration. Was delicious as a granola though :)
Good to know, Autumn!! I wonder if you took some of the dates and heated them with water to make a bit of a paste, and threw that in with the rest of the dates and other ingredients… maybe that would make more of a binder.
I usually find with these types of home made energy bars, especially date-based ones, that I usually wind up in the other direction, with a gooey paste that needs to be eaten pretty much out of the freezer! Usually pretty tasty though…