When You're Too Lazy to Chew Your Fruits and Veggies
Two Christmases ago, I got myself a blender. It was on sale, so I didn't have to think twice about buying it. Besides, I wanted to start my smoothie regimen, and my last blender had conked out (Lesson learned: DO NOT buy cheap, nameless appliances!).
Why make smoothies, you may ask. Well, I have 2 main reasons:
- I wanted to detox (it was after Christmas, so I wanted to get rid of all the toxins left by holiday hams and lechon, and pork barbecue, and the sweets… you get the idea?), and
- I was too lazy to chew the leaves and skins of the fruits I wanted to eat to detox.
Don't get me wrong! I love eating fruits and vegetables. But having to eat so much in one sitting in order for me to feel full makes me dread the amount of chewing I would have to do just to get all those nutrients inside my system. Besides, sipping the smoothie from my cute tumbler with a long red straw seems more fun.
So first, I tried to experiment with my favorite fruits--bananas, mangoes, pineapple. So I developed a formula: banana-pineapple-cereal drink-yogurt drink for breakfast, and cucumber-pineapple-yogurt drink for dinner.
After a while, I got tired of slurping the same combinations, day in and day out. So I tried other fruits and veggies--dragon fruit, kiwi, watermelon, honeydew, carrots, grapes, apples, wansuy, celery…
I also tried combining stuff like pineapple, cucumber and wansuy (yum!), cucumber & red dragon fruit (yum! yum!), cucumber, pineapple and celery (eh… I can live with it, sometimes). And just recently, I tried adding ashitaba leaves to my smoothies (winner!).
Juicing is also good, but personally, for me, blending all the stuff together and sipping everything--pulp and juice--gives me the vitamins AND the fiber I need.
Aside from the nutritional benefits of sipping half a liter of blended fruits and vegetables, it also cools my system, especially the ones with cucumber. That's a basic ingredient in lhasi, a drink commonly ordered in kabab places. Cucumber cools your throat and digestive system after eating all those spicy stuff. And since it's the dry season again (Nope, contrary to what we think, it is not called summer; the Philippines only has 2 seasons--wet and dry.), a cool smoothie is a welcome treat to beat the heat.
And so, I am sharing with you my favorite combinations here. Hopefully, you'd be brave enough to try to unconventional ones, and enjoy the familiar ones. And, if you're thinking of making your own combos, here's a rule that I learned from a nutrition expert: combine fruits whose colors would look good together. Chances are, they would also taste great when combined.
Happy blending!
Breakfast Smoothie
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1 large banana or (2 medium-sized), sliced & frozen
1 sachet pineapple tidbits, frozen (I use Del Monte)
1 small brick yogurt drink, frozen (I use Dutch Mill)
1 sachet Milo or Bear Brand Busog Lusog cereal drink
Combine everything in a blender, and blend away! If it gets too thick, add a little cold water (2 tbsp. at a time) until you get sipping consistency. Pour into a tall tumbler.
Red Smoothie
Dragon fruit (about half a large fruit, or 1 medium-sized)*
1 sachet pineapple tidbits, frozen (I use Del Monte)
1 small brick yogurt drink, frozen (I use Dutch Mill)
1 medium cucumber, peeled and seeded
*Use the red variety. It will give your smoothie a deep red color.
Detox Smoothie
1 medium cucumber, peeled and seeded
sweet fresh pineapple (about 1/4 of a whole fruit, sliced and frozen); or 1 sachet pineapple tidbits, frozen (I use Del Monte)
1 bundle wansuy (Chinese parsley) - in the supermarket, this is usually the P15 to P20 bundle; but if you go to Nepa Q-Mart and ask them for P15 worth of wansuy, they will give you an entire bouquet!
Warning: The wansuy can be an acquired taste for some, so you may go easy on the wansuy the first time.
My Dinner Smoothie
1 sachet pineapple tidbits, frozen (I use Del Monte)
1 small brick yogurt drink, frozen (I use Dutch Mill)
1 medium cucumber, peeled and seeded
5 to 10 leaves ashitaba
Other cool combos: banana & strawberries; mango (frozen) and carrots (raw, sliced); the fruit combos in supermarkets (just put them all in, add frozen yogurt drink and enjoy!); cucumber-pineapple-celery stick-yogurt drink; apple & carrot; honeydew & yogurt drink.
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