Smoothie Secrets: Blend Like a Pro | 056

Tired of the same smoothies? Up your game with tips from my cookbooks. As The Blender Girl, I’ve spent decades crafting thousands of recipes for my websites, nutrition programs, restaurants, hotels, and food and lifestyle companies. Now, I’m sharing everything I’ve learned about making shakes with the wow factor.   

I’ll walk you through my six steps to sensational smoothies: from thinking outside the box with liquids, choosing the right fruits and veggies, achieving super creamy textures, unexpected leafy greens beyond spinach and kale, to using herbs, spices, extracts, and superfoods to boost flavor and nutrition.  

You’ll also learn about incorporating flavored ice, frozen veggies, juices, herbal teas, fermented beverages, and citrus zest to take your shakes to the next level. And get the wildest and most delicious flavor pairings that will make you weak in the knees.   

We’ll cover how to avoid the common pitfalls: Strategies for preventing blood sugar spikes, bloating, reflux, and the dreaded chill in winter. Plus how to bring back vibrant colors and flavors when your blend looks like swamp water, and secrets for fixing flavor flops!   

Last and not to be missed: Why protein powders are one of the worst things to add to shakes. 

Join me for the ultimate smoothie masterclass.  

 

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS: 

• The best smoothies deliver fabulous flavor and balanced nutrition.  
• Add protein and fats to balance the carbs and avoid blood sugar spikes. 
• Skip protein powders made with isolates and use whole foods for better nutrition.  
• Boost flavor and nutrient density with herbs, spices, and superfoods.  
• Experiment with unusual ingredients and pairings for unexpected taste sensations. 
• Go beyond spinach and kale. Try other leafy greens in shakes. 
• Add frozen raw veggies to boost smoothies—without altering taste. 
• Rather than gulping, sip smoothies slowly to support better digestion.   

 

MEET TESS MASTERS:   

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of the Skinny60® health programs.       

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.    

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.    

 

CONNECT WITH TESS:  

Website: https://tessmasters.com/     

Podcast: https://ithastobeme.com/      

Health Programs: https://www.skinny60.com/  

Delicious Recipes: https://www.theblendergirl.com/  

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Episode Transcript

Tess Masters (00:01):
We are talking about smoothies today, one of my favorite subjects. So as the blender girl, yes, I have spent a lot of time making 1000s of smoothies. So for those of you that have my cookbooks with Random House, the blender girl, the blender girl smoothies and the perfect blend, they all contain smoothies. So the blender girl cookbook and the perfect blend contain all kinds of recipes, not just smoothies, soups, salads, main meals, dressing, sauces, all kinds of things, but the blender goes smoothies, which was the second book, just contains 100 smoothies. So 100 of my favorite smoothies. So, oh gosh, I would receive hundreds of emails a week with people sharing their blend, sharing pictures with their children, their grandchildren, their partners, sharing their blends with me. It's been a really joyful part of my work. So I thought I'd do an episode sharing my six steps to sensational smoothies. So in the blender girl smoothies book, I shared a chart of how to make really spectacular smoothies, and it became very popular. It was featured in The Washington Post and a lot of magazines and media outlets, and it's been really wonderful to see how people in our community have been using that to make really dimensional, well balanced, nutritious smoothies. So what I love about smoothies is that they just level the playing field in the kitchen. Anybody can make an amazing smoothie with very little skills and even less time, right? So a basic smoothie contains three, you know, essential elements, right? A liquid or you've got to have high water content, fruits and vegetables that will blend into liquid, your base flavor or ingredients and the chill factor, right? It's got to be frozen fruit or ice, chilled liquid. It's got to be, you know, frosty, creamy, yummy, right? So smoothies come in, you know, so many different flavors and so many different combinations. You know, the combinations are endless. But the problem that I have with most smoothies is that they're typically quite bland and flat in flavor. It's sweet and not much else. They tend to be pretty high in natural sugar. They often can spike blood sugar levels cause crashes, you know, so that you're hungry afterwards. They don't sustain you. And I just find them a bit dull, quite frankly. And often, if you do try to put different things together, you come up with kind of a yucky, sludgy brown concoction that looks and tastes like the place where the plants came to die. And nobody wants that, right? So for me, I want a smoothie that delivers balanced nutrition. I can pack in a ton of nutrition, but I also want it to have a mind blowing, dimensional flavor that takes me on a journey like a textured dish. And so I'm always looking for a smoothie that fulfills those things. So here are the six steps. I'm going to share them with you. So those of you that have the blender girl smoothies book, you can find that chart in written form. But here we go. So step one is the liquid, right? So typically we want to be using some kind of a liquid, and I'll go through these six steps in detail. Step two is the base the base flavor, right? It's typically frozen fruits, some vegetables, things like that, right? Now, as I said before, if you are using really high water content, things like watermelon, for example, we wouldn't necessarily need to add a liquid, right? Because we're going to blend the melon and it's going to become our liquid, right? So number one is liquid. Number two is base. Number three is we got to get creamy, right? We got to get creamy with frozen fruit and all kinds of other things, right? I think that pretty much every smoothie I make has some kind of green in it. So number four is go green, then number five, and number six is where we get into the really lovely territory of making smoothies that are really interesting. So step five is boosting. We want to boost the nutrition of our smoothies. And number six is we want to add the magic, which is adding that dimension of flavors, right? So let's go over the liquids, all right. So I'm going to be speaking for a standard two serving smoothie that yields 32 ounces. So when I'm creating my smoothies, I typically standardize them to yield 216 ounce glasses, right? So two servings. Now you may decide that you want to drink the whole thing, but for balanced nutrition, you probably would typically be drinking one glass, right? So for a standard 32 ounce smoothie that serves two people, I typically on average. But again, this depends on what else you're adding. You're probably adding one to two cups of liquid on average, right? Might be one and a half might be more, who knows, right? So it doesn't mean that you've only got to add one kind of a liquid, right? So it may be that you're using a little bit of melon, like I said, you're doing a little bit of that, and then you may want to add a little bit of almond milk. For example, you may have, you know, two. Cups of the same thing, right? So my go to is always going to be filtered water, right? Why filtered water? Am I specifying that? Because if you don't filter your water, your body's got to do the filtering, and it's got better things to do, right? So I'm always using high quality filtered water. You may want to use some fresh coconut water. It's really delicious in smoothies, because coconut water, you know, it's kind of nature's Gatorade, right? It's got more electrolytes than most commercial sports drinks without all of the nasties, right? So it's just got all of this, this beautiful health promoting stuff in it, right? I'm not talking about the coconut water that you'd find in Tetra packs in the shelf stable portion of the grocery store, right? So cracking open a young Thai coconut, but again, good, better, best, not perfect. Get the coconut water that you've got, right? Then we're going to go to our milks. Now, I don't personally consume dairy milk, but you may want to, right? But all of the smoothies that I create are vegan, so they're, I'm using plant based milk. So, you know, mixing it up. I'm not using the same milk every single day, right? So unsweetened almond milk, you may do. You know, some boxed coconut milk, which is just diluted canned coconut milk, really, right? It's just got more water added to it. You may do a little bit of full fat canned coconut milk, but I wouldn't be adding it in the one to two cup range, right? It's just way too rich. It'll be quite sickly. And it's also a lot of saturated fat, right? So we want to moderate our consumption of coconut and saturated fats just to support better heart support better heart health, right? So when I talk about coconut milk and smoothies in huge quantities, I'm talking about boxed coconut milk. If you want to do accent flavors, then I'll use full fat can coconut milk in smaller quantities. Right? Now, I'm not a very big user of fruit juices in smoothies, but I will use them as a tool to maybe add a little bit of sweetness. Instead of adding sugar or added sugars. I may use it as an accent to kind of bring in a flavor note. So, for example, pomegranate juice, you know, may add a little bit of orange juice to something, right? I also use it sometimes as a way of pulling back a smoothie from, you know, a sludgy brown color, for example, right? So I may add something purple. I may add a little bit of beet or something to bring it back into a purple note, because, you know, when you blend berries and leafy greens, it tends to turn brown, right? So there's different things that I would use fruit juices for, but I don't typically add them in huge quantities, just because it just adds a lot of natural sugar, right? But you can, you know, you add fresh apple juice, fresh orange juice, fresh pineapple juice, a little bit of grapefruit juice is really delicious. Tangerine juice, cranberry juice, you know, with berries can be really beautiful. But don't discount teas, making tea and icing it to add to smoothies, right? So I'll often add some green tea and grapefruit. It's a really beautiful combination. Sometimes I'll add some black tea, some white tea, Rui boss tea with orange and cranberries is an exquisite combination. Peppermint tea, you know, Mint is a really beautiful flavor with things right. Chamomile tea can be really beautiful with peach and certain fruits, apricot, things like that, right? Lemon and ginger teas, you might add your lemon and ginger that way and then add some fruits to it. Also don't discount kefir, right? Milk kefirs, coconut water kefir, water kefirs. Kombucha can be added to smoothies in smaller quantities, right? It can fizz up. It can cause some frothing if you put it in huge amounts, but it could be an accent flavor where you may be, you know, adding some probiotics, you know, with your kefir and your fermented beverages, right? So that can be a really beautiful thing. But again, you may not be adding those things in the one to two cup quantities, but just some things to think about, you know, just to add some other flavors. But I'm a really big user of herbal tea in smoothies. It adds a really beautiful note, and it's quite subtle. So play around with the quantities. You know, there's certain fruits that go well with certain other things, right? So again, this is in my book. I talk a lot about pairing of flavors, right? So let's move on to step two. So step two is the base, right? So creating and choosing your base flavor, right? So typically, again, in a 32 ounce two serving smoothie, typically it's going to be about two cups of frozen fruit, right? Sometimes it's three cups, it just depends. Sometimes it's one and a half cups, and then you add some fresh fruit to it, or something. So again, we're talking, you know, in an average way here, right? Your base can be a single flavor. It could be a combination of several flavors, right? So my go to base ingredients for smoothies are fresh fruits and vegetables, right? So? Melon, avocado, orange, apple, grapefruit, papaya, seedless grapes, red or green. There's so many different varieties, right? Little bit of pear. Sometimes I will add some cucumber. I'm very big on adding whole fresh limes that are peeled using the zest, stuff like. And I'll talk about that in a little bit. Sometimes I will even add a whole lemon, not very often, though, right? Sometimes I might do half. So you can add the flesh of these things to get the full nutritional value. Sometimes I will add beet to things with berries, right? I wouldn't use beet in huge quantities, but it's a great way to add more nutrition and get beats into people that might not like beets, right? In smaller ways, but adding other flavors to it, right? I love using coconut meat. I love using peaches, apricots, nectar and stone fruits, right? Sometimes I'll do savory smoothies, and I'll do tomatoes and bell peppers celery.

(10:38):
Sometimes I'll add fennel as an accent note. So that's how I will use fresh fruits and vegetables in terms of frozen fruit. You know, we know what the go tos are, right? Frozen strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, cherries, pineapple, mango, peaches, banana is a very common ingredient, right? So we those are very, very common things that we would have, mango, things like that, right? So often I will also add leftover cooked vegetables. So I might add some, let me tell you, roasted or steamed, pureed carrot is exquisite. And then maybe adding something else to that, right? Then adding a frozen element to that. Sometimes I will add roasted, mashed sweet potato, right, or pumpkin, right? Sometimes I will add canned, mashed pumpkin or sweet potato, for example, if I'm doing like a pie in a glass smoothie or something like that, right? So just be thinking outside of the box of how you could be adding different things. You know, sometimes I've even added, I typically mostly add, add raw beats to smoothies. But every once in a while, I can handle a steamed beat, but it's typically more assertive in flavor, so I typically stick to raw but again, you know, I can pretty much make anything work, like I've done events where I've asked participants to make the most disgusting tasting smoothie they possibly can, like, actually dare to screw it up. And I will show you how we can bring it back into something that's really, really delicious, right? But typically, what I'll say is a general rule with making smoothies, it's kind of like cooking with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, right? You keep adding and tweaking and tasting until you get it just right, right. And we don't really want to be pulling pulling things back. You can add it, but you can't take it back. Would be what I would typically say with recipe development, with smoothies, I would say that I can always pull it back right, and you get better at it, you know, the more that you do it, when you know some of these tips and tricks, and I'll talk about that in a little bit too. But those would be kind of like the my go to base ingredients, right? Sometimes avocado is the base, right? I'm going to talk about avocado being something I used to to add the creamy element for step three, which is, get creamy, get creamy and frosty, right? But sometimes I will add a whole avocado to a smoothie, and that will be my base, and I might add a little bit of banana. Let me tell you, there's a there's a banana bread smoothie recipe in the blender. Girl smoothies book that's literally avocado, banana cinnamon, and it literally tastes like banana bread, but it's made with avocado. It's really interesting. There's just a beautiful alchemy that's created between those two ingredients. It's kind of like when I discovered the combination of frozen or fresh strawberries and red bell pepper together. Oh, it is so mind blowing, this dimension of flavor that you cannot get any other way. And then to that, I'll hook on the sweetness and the slight spiciness with maybe a pinch of cayenne pepper. And then we get really dimensional from there, right? And it's got this beautiful middle note that hooks onto the back end kick. And this is where you get that really nuanced flavor, you know, by blending ingredients together. And again, you learn these things by playing and giving it a go and taking risks, you know, and trying different things. And I always add things in small quantities. Taste it, Ooh, okay, let me see if it can tolerate a bit more, you know, like, so if I'm going to add, you know, two cups of strawberries, maybe half of a red bell pepper. I mean, I can, I can do a whole red bell pepper, but some people can't, right? And it's interesting for you to notice the difference in flavor, you know, it's, it's just a really fun process, right? Okay, so step three is, get creamy, right? Get a creamy and frosty texture. We don't want to be chewing our way through a smoothie, right? We want it to have a really beautiful texture, right? To me, it's a non negotiable element of a great smoothie, right? So sometimes, as I just said, with the avocado, your base ingredient may deliver that creamy or frosty texture. So you may not need to add the creamy element, right? But if you don't have that element, this is what I typically do, right? So in terms of fresh fruit, I talked about avocado. Now, remember that avocado gets thicker the more you aerate it. So sometimes it might be that you only need an eighth of an avocado or a quarter, sometimes a half. Half very rarely am I adding a whole avocado to a smoothie, but every once in a while, right? So just again adding it. The most common go to way to cream up a smoothie is with banana. And I love banana. Don't get me wrong. Love it, love it, love it. And I've put it in quite a number of my smoothie recipes, but I'm not always using banana every single day. Bananas are amazing. They're loaded with nutrients, potassium, all the things, right? But they are very high in natural sugar. And if you're listening to this thinking, well, in addition to that, I'm allergic to banana. I just don't like banana, right? This is going to be welcome information for you, right? Other things, in terms of fresh fruit, would be a little bit of fresh mango. It's got a really beautiful, beautiful, buttery texture, you know, maybe you don't want a mango flavor, so you won't put a whole mango in, but maybe you put a little bit in, right? In terms of frozen fruit, frozen mango is very, very buttery and creamy, right? Frozen pineapple will do that a little bit, not as much. Frozen peaches, frozen berries, you know, just bringing in that beautiful, buttery, creamy, kind of a note, right? Coconut, fresh coconut meat, not shredded coconut, because it could get quite nearly and if you don't have a high speed blender, it's not going to bring in that element, but fresh coconut meat from a young Thai coconut, one tablespoon of creamed coconut or coconut butter. So you can get that in a block at an Asian grocery store or a health food store. You can also get it in jars. You know, sometimes it's sold as coconut mana or coconut butter, right? Remember what I talked about moderate, moderating your consumption of coconut? So my dietitians in skinny 60, that's something that we've really been educating our community about the last six years, about how coconut is an amazing food. It's full of laureate capric, myristic, stearic acids. It's lethal to bacteria, viruses, fungi, however, and the medium to long train. Triglycerides are definitely beneficial for health, but we want to be be moderating and being mindful of our concerns. Consumption of coconut. So we recommend no more than two to three servings of coconut per week, and that's coconut oil, coconut meat, coconut milk. I mean coconut in any form except coconut water. That's fat free, right? So just being mindful about getting in balanced nutrition and not relying on any one food every single day, right? So I'm going to say with coconut meat in a 32 ounce smoothie, it's probably, on average, maybe a half a cup. You may do a cup, but that's a lot of saturated fat, right? So again, be thinking about some of this stuff, not just the flavor and the texture. Yogurt is a big go to one for people, right? So I'm always going for unsweetened yogurt with as few additives, preservatives, all kinds of things. Remember that most yo commercial yogurts are like puddings. They're like desserts, and they contain a lot of sugar, right? So if you do do dairy, you know, an unsweetened Greek yogurt, you may do a coconut yogurt, but again, moderating our consumption of coconut and almond yogurt. There's so many plant yogurts now, right, but just finding something that works for you, right? Not only would that be adding a creamy element, but you'd also be getting some probiotics with that as well. Right? Another thing that I use a lot to cream Up Smoothies is I will use a little bit of nuts or seeds, right? So, a quarter to a half a cup of raw unsalted cashews. You never want to use salted cashews or roasted cashews. It's just too assertive in flavor. So raw unsalted cashews is a really, really great thing to do. They typically blend into a really creamy consistency in most blenders. However, what I'll say, just from a health perspective, is that cashews are acid forming and they can be fungus forming, right? So I wouldn't be using them every single day, right, but it's really great for from a culinary perspective, right? You could use a little bit of blanched slivered almonds, or just blanched almonds, but they tend to deliver a bit of a gritty texture in conventional blenders, even in high speed blenders, I wouldn't be using them in huge amounts, but you still could do a quarter to a half a cup, right? If you want to use a more alkaline forming nut or seed, you don't want to be using cashews all the time, right?

(19:10):
In terms of a creamy texture, chia, hemp and flax, I wouldn't be relying on them for a creamy texture, right? They're possibly going to add a little bit of grit, particularly in a conventional blender, I'd be more adding those when we talk about step five and six, adding the magic, you know, and boosting the nutrition and that kind of stuff, right? A really great thing to have on hand is flavored ice. So, you know, when you're you're going to go away on a holiday or something, and you've got a little bit of milk left in your fridge and like, what do I do with that? Freeze it, pour it into ice cube trays and freeze it and just leave it for when you come home. That's what I would consider creamy flavored ice, right? So pouring your almond milk into an ice cube tray, popping a couple of those into a smoothie, is just a quick, easy way to add a frosty element, a creamy element, that kind of stuff, right? Nut. Butters is another thing that I will use quite a bit where I will add one to two tablespoons of almond butter, cashew butter, macadamia butter, um, Sun butter, for those of you that want to go nut free, hazelnut butter can add an accent flavor and a creaminess. Pecan butter, walnut butter, you know, for those of you that eat peanut butter, peanut butter is not typically one of my go tos, just because it is acid forming that contain aflatoxins, carcinogens. You know, peanuts are so delicious, and peanut butter is yum, yum yum. If there was an hour left on Earth, I would spend some of it eating peanut butter, but not on a daily basis, right? It doesn't support better health, but it sure is delicious. And, you know, some berries with some peanut butter and a smoothie. Yum, yum, yum, banana and peanut butter, yum, yum, yum. I mean, from a culinary perspective, I could talk about what great combinations we could, we could do with peanut butter. But from a health promoting perspective, my dietitians and I, we don't recommend consuming peanuts every single day or every single week, right? It's more of a, you know, a fun food that you eat when, when you want some joy, right? And I know that it's a very high on the allergen list. So you may be listening going, well, we don't, we don't do peanuts in our house anyway, right? Sometimes, every once in a while, for people that can't eat nuts, that can't eat certain foods or whatever, I might use a little bit of tofu, a little bit of organic silken tofu. Can cream up a smoothie. But you know that can be a problem for people that you know that it's typically a it can often be a trigger food for women going through menopause. So just be mindful of that. You may be going soy free. You may not want to be taking in those extra phytoestrogens and stuff like that. So, but I'm just offering it as an option. Sometimes it causes a little bit of digestive gas and bloating when you combine it with fruit, right? So that may be something you just may want to monitor and go, is this smoothie making me really gassy and bloated? Okay? What might that be? Might be the combination? It might be that you're eating too much fruit in one sitting. It might be one of the ingredients, or that kind of thing, right? Every once in a while I will use a little bit of rolled oats. Now, I wouldn't necessarily say that it adds a creamy texture as such, but it does alter the texture, right? So you may add, you know, I'm thinking like a couple of tablespoons, a quarter of a cup, right? I wouldn't add any more than that, right? But it's an interesting thing to try, right? And then I talked before about base flavors with your cooked vegetables, right? A little bit of cooked, steamed carrot, sweet potato, squash, pumpkin, right? I've even added a little bit of steamed mashed cauliflower, very, very small amount, right? And I'll talk about cauliflower in just a minute. When I talk about adding, adding, boosting the nutrition in step five, right? But just be thinking outside the box again, of all these, these different things that you can be adding, and it also helps with food waste as well, right? But again, we're adding small tasting it, adding as we go, right. Okay, so step four is go green, right? So I've got a guide for adding leafy greens in the blender, girl smoothies book. There's also an ultimate guide for making green smoothies, which is a free PDF at on the blender. Girl website. So you could definitely download that as well. There's a post about it. I'll add that in the show notes as well. So go green. Step four is just maximizing the nutrition of your blends, right? And for me, I'm always making sure I'm eating lots of green foods every day, and adding greens to a smoothie is one of the easiest, most delicious ways to get more greens into your diet, right? So here are my go to greens. I classify greens in mild flavor, medium strong flavor. And then I put herbs in with greens as well, right? Because they do contain chlorophyll as well, right? But we'll talk more about herbs in a different way when we go to steps five and six, right? But so with greens, again, we're talking about a two serving, 32 ounce smoothie. I find that most blends can tolerate one to two cups of baby spinach. English spinach is different to baby spinach, right? It's just baby spinach is so much more mild in flavor, right? If you're using a different kind of spinach, you may want to add it in very, very small amounts, right? You want to wash it right? So one to two cups of baby spinach, another mild green would be remain lettuce. Right now, remain lettuce. Remember, it helps to induce sleep, helps to relax you. So you may not want to be adding remain, just to be noticing how that affects your body, right? But you can add remain. Now, I'll tell you one of the greatest kept secrets in the smoothie making world is radish greens. The tops of red radishes, we typically throw them away, right? They contain more nutrients than the roots, right? But they do, they do carry a lot of grit. So if you love red radishes, chop off the greens, then you gotta use them straight away, right? Then you want to just soak them a little bit water, get rid of the dirt and the grit, throw them. A smoothie. Such a great way to boost the nutrition, reduce food waste. It's just fantastic. They've got a slight spicy flake, just very, very slight when you stick them in your mouth and you may go, Oh, no way. That's never going in a smoothie, right? But it works, yeah. So again, just try it in small amounts and see what happens. Right? So they're the mild greens, spinach, romaine, radish greens,

(25:21):
then the medium greens are a half a cup to to a cup in a two in a 32 ounce smoothie of swiss chard, I wouldn't do any more than a cup. And then it gets a little bit murky, a little bit earthy. So start with a half a cup and just taste it right, and then maybe just add a tiny bit more. Just forget again. You can add it, but you can't take it back, right? Baby bok choy, not mature bok choy or pak choy. That is really gnarly in a smoothie, let me tell you. But baby bok choy, particularly the green bits. I've added the white bits too, but the green bits, again, I think one of the best kept secrets in the smoothie making world. And baby bok choy is lower in oxalates than spinach, right? So if you are, you're predisposed to oxalate induced kidney stones you're watching, or things like that, or you're just watching your intake of oxalate baby bok choy to the rescue. I've put collard greens in a smoothie, right? They're a little bit more assertive than chard, so I would always start with half a cup beet greens. Again, another example of how the Greens contain more nutrients in the roots. Right? Now, beet greens can be quite assertive, so I'd always start with a half a cup, right? So in the blender, girl, smoothies book, I'm using all of these greens in different ways, so it's a great way to to use the recipes as a way to illustrate and try things where you know that I've taste tested it and it's already delicious, right? You don't have to worry about wasting your ingredients, right? And then you can go, oh yeah, I remember how she used that in that in that quantity, and it really worked. I'm going to try it with my own blend, right? So I think that that's the way that we use cookbooks and recipes, not just to make delicious things, but also to teach us techniques and strategies for then formulating and riffing and creating our own blends, right? And then we've got kale, right? So, you know, you could add a cup, a cup of any kind of kale, right? It could be Lacinato kale, Dino, you know, Tuscan kale, whatever you want to call it, and then curly kale, it doesn't matter which kind, right. So again, I'd always start with half a cup, because you may be quite sensitive to it. It depends on the other ingredients you're adding. That's another thing. So remember that these quantities that I'm giving you, it's just a general guide right out of, you know, sort of an aggregate of all the 1000s of smoothies I made. That's what I would say in a general way, right? So those are the mild and that's the medium greens and the strong greens. I would only ever use as an accent flavor, right? So I'd only be adding an eighth of a cup or a quarter of a cup at the most. And what do I classify as, as strong or accent greens? It would be arugula or rocket if you're in Australia, or dandelion greens, which a lot of people, they're wild edibles. You know that people, a lot of people, have growing in their garden, right? They are very, very strong, assertive greens. But let me tell you what I discovered when I was doing the blender got smoothies. Book is that when you put dandelion greens in a smoothie with pineapple, little bit of coconut, you put a little eighth of a cup of dandelion greens, and it almost tastes like a pina colada with alcohol in it. This is what I mean by the magic that's been that's created with the alchemy between ingredients. It's astonishing. Likewise, with arugula, I can add just a little accent note, and you know how arugula has got that little hint of spice, and arugula is so it's such a powerful key later, right? So it helps to pull toxins out of the body, heavy metals out of the body, just like cilantro, parsley, those kinds of things, right? So again, we're creating beautiful, delicious, fresh food that is as functional as it is flavorful. So I'm always kind of keeping my eye on how we're achieving both of those things at the same time and again. You just get better at this the more you practice it right. Like I've discovered all of these things over many, many years of doing this right, and you can too, right? And then, like I said, I would put fresh herbs in this category. I you know, a lot of these things are crossing over between categories, right? So two tablespoons or a quarter of a cup, sometimes even more, a fresh mint. Fresh basil is delicious with watermelon and strawberries. It is so incredibly delicious. And remember that Mint is cooling to the body in the summer weather, right? Basil, you know, helps to to, you know, relax your central nervous system, right? Flat leaf parsley, never curly parsley. I mean, those of you that are in my community know that I think curly parsley should be outlawed. I think it's the most disgusting thing. I would never even put it as a garnish on anything. I'm always using flat leaf continental Italian parsley, right? That it comes in different names. Typically it's flat leaf is what. Call it right again, parsley and cilantro, they're accent flavors, right? So we're never going to be adding them in huge amounts. But let me tell you, the most, the most famous smoothie that have just has been featured in so many places. It's at our restaurant in Kansas City. Enjoy Pure Food and drink. People love it is the taste like, tastes like ice cream, kale shake, right? It has been featured in so many places. It's the smoothie that I get the most emails about, and it is the number one most visited recipe on the blender girl, website, it is delicious, and it does taste like ice cream. Tastes like pistachio ice cream, when you get the alchemy of the flavors just right. If you just want to Google, taste like ice cream, kale shake, the blender girl it will come up and you'll see it. You can get that recipe on the blender. Girl website, my second favorite smoothie of all time would be the pineapple salsa smoothie from the blender. Girl cookbook, it's also in the blender. Girl smoothies book. It is so dimensional in flavor, and it just ticks all the boxes. It is absolutely exquisite. But when you look at the recipe, you're going to think it's the weirdest, most disgusting combination you've ever heard of, right? It's pineapple and cilantro, cucumber, chili, a sliver of onion. I mean, it's just, it's got avocado. I mean, you're just going to go, No way Jose, right? But I'm telling you right now, it is extraordinary, and I just really don't want you to miss it, right? It's exquisite. So definitely check that out if you want to be brave and thank me later, because it's delicious, right? But that's where cilantro just and if you think about it, that's another thing I'll say, when you're constructing your own smoothies, think about what you want to achieve. So what does a good pineapple salsa have in it? I love pineapple salsa, by the way, right? It's got the sweet, it's got the heat, little bit of onion, little bit of salt, right? So think about like, like, when I'm doing a pie in the glass smoothie, right? What does a great apple pie have? Well, Apple it's got that beautiful, buttery pastry flavor. It's got some cinnamon, you know? So I'm adding those elements into my apple pie smoothie, right? I'm a big fan of pie in the glass smoothies, muffin smoothies, if there's a brownie, Brownie smoothie, I mean, I'm, you know, there's, we could talk all day long about all the amazing things you could create. But the reason why I bring that up is just about talking about herbs in smoothies, right in that pineapple salsa smoothie, it's just delicious. Okay? Step five is boost. Is boosting the nutrition of your smoothies and maximizing the healing potential of them by adding nutrient dense foods. So here is where we get really, really, really interesting, right? So I talked before about chia seeds, hemp seeds and flax seeds, right? They're full of omega threes. They're full they they deliver protein, right? And with hemp seeds complete protein, right? So I'm often adding chia, hemp and flax to my smoothies, but I would just start small, right? Because not every smoothie can handle a tablespoon, a tablespoon and a tablespoon of those three, right? So I would just start with a teaspoon. Something's better than none, right. So a teaspoon of chia, teaspoon of flax, teaspoon of hemp. Hemp tends to get grassy in really huge amounts chia seeds. You can put a little bit in, but remember that she is seeds. They swell with water. They help to fill you up. You may not want as many of those you know with depending on what else you're eating, right, you may be sensitive to it, right? Same with flax seeds, right? So flax seeds need to be ground in order to be more bioavailable, you can throw them in a smoothie hole, because we're blending it anyway, right? You don't need to worry about that too much. So seeds are great. Cold pressed oils are things that we often just don't think about putting in smoothies, right? So a teaspoon to a tablespoon of of of cold pressed avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil, can be really amazing, cold pressed hemp oil, flax oil, those two need to be kept in the fridge, right? Little bit of coconut oil can be used as an accent flavor. To boost the coconut flavor in smoothies, is often what I would use it for. I may use coconut butter or coconut oil to add some of that, those health promoting qualities I was talking about earlier, right? Because they're great immune it's a great immune booster. But again, I'd be looking at moderating my consumption of coconut but it is an amazing immune booster, right? So sometimes, if I know I've been around sick people, I might just eat a chunk of coconut mana, or coconut meat or coconut butter, almost like a piece of fudge, right? And again, it's got that Laura Capri maristic stearic acid that's really combats

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pathogens and boosts your immunity, right? Little bit of pumpkin seed oil. Oh, let me give you another little tip about flavors. So let's say you love the taste of peanut butter, but you don't want to eat peanuts, or you're allergic to peanuts, or whatever it is, right? If you use almond butter and add just a little bit of Styrian pumpkin seed oil. It's a specific type of pumpkin seed oil. It almost tastes like peanut butter. Oh, it's another little tip. It's such a great little discovery, right? Macadamia oil can be interesting with so. And tropical fruits right now, these may be things you're never going to have in your house. I'm just giving you options, right? And then we're talking about superfoods, right? So we're talking about acai, frozen acai packets, unsweetened SAEs. You know, that's become a huge trend the last sort of 15 years, right? You may also do a little bit of acai powder. You may do some pomegranate powder, goji berries, or Goji powder, camu powder, which is just such a huge vitamin C rich food, maki powder, maca powder. Now I you can get maca powder in raw and gelatinized. Maca powder is one of those things that you should only ever consume gelatinized, right? It's easier on the digestive system, and market is highly susceptible to microbial contamination, right? So that's another thing where the raw food movements kind of really pushed raw maca, but it is absolutely a food that has to be consumed, cooked, gelatinized, right? So just be mindful of that, right? But I love nevitas, organics. I love that company. They do amazing superfood powders, but there's so many companies that are wonderful, right? So, and you can keep those in jars, you know, in your pantry or in your fridge, and just scoop it out when you need it. But again, with those powders, a little goes a long way. And you can add it, but you can't take it back, right? So just be adding gradually. Likewise, I'm a huge fan of wheat grass powder, you know, you can tip typically add a teaspoon into most smoothies all, but I've noticed, and it doesn't alter flavor right now, when you go into things like spirulina, chlorella powders, those kinds of things, they're extremely assertive, and they can bring in a funky flavor. So if you want to add those, you'd be literally starting at a pinch to an eighth of a teaspoon and adding to taste, right? But hey, that can be really powerful. Now, in recent years, I've really moved away from dried spirulina and chlorella and moved to fresh spirulina, which is, oh God, incredible. I can literally eat it out of a nut butter jar. Like nut butter, it's so great, right? But it's quite hard to get. It's quite hard to ship. A lot of companies are really struggling with how they keep up with production, so it's sort of trended for a while, and at the moment, it's just a bit more challenging. But I'll still throw it out there, because hopefully, I'm hoping that a company will figure it out right? So frozen vegetables, oh, let me talk about one of the other amazing secrets of the smoothie making world. So our taste buds are temperature sensitive. We can't taste the full dimension of flavors at extremely hot or extremely cold temperatures. So we'll talk about soup as an example. So we would never salt. Add salt to our soup. Maybe add a little bit of lemon to brighten the flavors When the soup is boiling hot, because we our mouth just can't get around the full spectrum of flavors. And I don't know if this has ever happened to you, where you'll add some salt or maybe add some vinegar. Some vinegar or some kind of an acid lemon juice, and then the soup will cool and you'll go, Oh, God, that's just way too salty, or it's way too lemony. It's because you've just got to let the soup cool. Got let's just let it cool or get warm, right where your mouth can get around that full spectrum of flavors. Likewise, when you make smoothies really, really cold, you also can't taste the full dimension of flavors. So that work. That phenomenon works for us with pungent ingredients, like beets or beet greens, for example. And that's where you can add frozen raw vegetables to a smoothie, and you cannot taste them. So I'll give you an example. I cannot stand raw broccoli or raw cauliflower. I I am never pulling raw broccoli or cauliflower off a cru to take platter in my life like I just think it should be outlawed. But do I love it cooked? Oh, can't get enough. And I've got a raw broccoli salad that you can find on the Belinda girl website. You smother it in a creamy dressing with nuts and seeds, and seeds, and it is just incredible. And my favorite way to eat raw broccoli if I want to actually taste it right. But this is a great tip for veggie phobic adults and children who don't want to eat vegetables, right? You can sneak them into a smoothie unnoticed, right? So you can add a quarter to a half a cup of raw has to be raw, not cooked, raw, frozen broccoli or cauliflower and you cannot taste it, just try it. Thank me. Later, I'm telling you, it's just the greatest tip ever. Another thing that I will do to just boost the nutrition is that instead of adding ice, I will add raw frozen zucchini. It is completely innocuous in flavor. You can add it to any smoothie, and it doesn't alter the flavor. Now, why? Typically, if I want to be really versatile, I will peel the zucchini, because then it's white and it doesn't alter the flavor. If I leave the peel on, it will turn, potentially turn the color a green or a murky color. Now, if you don't care about that, you're better to not peel the zucchini, because so much of the nutrients of fruits and vegetables is on the skins or just beneath, right? So just adding that caveat about frozen zucchini, but again, I've always got frozen zucchini in my freezer. It's just incredible. The other thing that I will often do in terms of boosting for Step five is that I will add, I'll break open a probiotic capsule, or I will a. I'm stirring, you know, I'll, it's not stirring. I'll put in, you know, a teaspoon of probiotic powder, or a quarter of a teaspoon, or a half a teaspoon, whatever you want to do, right? But that's just another way to add probiotics, right? It's just so incredible. So many great tips there, right? So Step six is add the magic. And this is about the flavor, like I talked about those, those really beautiful, nuanced smoothies that take you on a journey, like a textured dish. So I want to have a front end flavor, and then I want it to the bouquet to open and develop in my mouth, in the middle. The middle is the hardest thing to get, and I'll teach you that in just a minute. And then you've got that back end kick or surprise, back ends typically spice, not always, but often it is right. So typically, front end is savory or sweet. Middle is some kind of maybe could be a herb, could be a spice. Could be just the alchemy the ingredients, like I talked about with the strawberries and the bell pepper and then the back end kick ginger, cayenne pepper, chili might be a lingering note of some kind from the base flavor could be an accent. Could be a her fresh herb could be a lot of things right, depends on on the blend. So adding a touch of of magic. It's not just about the flavor. Could also be about the nutrition. Like I said, a lot of these things cross over all these categories, but, oh, this is actually my favorite bit to teach you, because this is where you really make the difference with your smoothies, right? So, spices? Oh, I mean, I've got a very, very deep spice cabinet, right? So a pinch to an eighth of a teaspoon of little bit of cloves. Cloves are bully spices. They don't like to play well with others, right? So you're always adding just a just a pinch, right? Because otherwise it could overtake the whole thing, right? Cardamom is another bully spice, right? Exquisite spice, but a little goes a long way, right? Clay and pepper always starting with a pinch, which I would classify as a 16th of a teaspoon, sometimes an eighth of a teaspoon. Very rarely am I adding any more than that, right? Or it just overtakes the whole thing, right? It's kind of like adding too much chili to addition. Or you can taste a spice and you can't taste anything else because your taste buds are burnt off. Right? Often, I'll do red pepper flakes to an eight, sometimes a quarter, but I always start with a pinch little bit of turmeric, but then we gotta add a little bit of black pepper. Remember that the the curcumin in the turmeric is becomes more bioavailable when it's mixed with the piperine and black pepper, right? So always adding a pinch of black pepper if we're adding turmeric to anything, just to get the most bang for our buck with the nutrition yellow curry powder. I know it sounds weird, but if you've got the blender girl smoothies book, just look up that tropical curry smoothie, because it's the bomb diggity, right? And again, really helps to warm up the body. So these spices are warming so it offsets the thermal temperature of the coolness of the fruit, which can be, you know, make you feel cold and damp in the winter months. So these spices not only have beautiful flavor, but again, from a medicinal perspective, from a health perspective, we're getting all of that good stuff as well, right? So then a quarter of a teaspoon to a teaspoon, sometimes more, right, of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, I've never added a whole teaspoon of nutmeg, right? Then it gets kind of funky, right? And then you you could add dried ginger. So if I'm doing sort of a pie in a glass smoothie, maybe I'll add dry ginger. But more often than not, I'm I'm adding fresh ginger. Oh gosh, do I love fresh ginger. I've always got fresh ginger in my house, right? So when I'll get this question a lot, well, if you're going to blend it anyway, why is everything listed in teaspoons and stuff? It's so that your recipe

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ends up with close approximation to what I've tested at home, right? So if I say, you know, a pinch with my fingers, or a handful of this, or whatever, that could mean a lot of different things, you know, depending on how big your hands are, right? Or how you're eyeballing. How you're eyeballing ingredients. So ingredients measure with greater accuracy when they're chopped, diced, grated, minced, right? So I'll get that a lot. Can I just throw the ginger in? Well, I don't know how much you're throwing in, right? So when I'm writing my recipes, I'm always using minced ginger, like I'm grading the ginger, right? And I love my ginger grater, like it's just after my blender would be my top five kitchen gadgets, right? So fresh ginger is delicious, and it is so it's warming, it's anti inflammatory, it's it helps to settle the stomach. There's so many reasons, and it just adds fabulous flavor, right? We talked about fresh herbs before, so let's talk about some of the other herbs, which I would use in an accent, kind of a way, right? So I will add one, I don't know, a quarter of a teaspoon, half a teaspoon, sometimes one and a half teaspoons of fresh rosemary. Never dried rosemary, that is funky. No. Thank you, right? I might also add a little bit of pasta. In cilantro, like I talked about in step five, I talked about the basil and the mint, right? So just don't discount fresh herbs. I've often put fresh lemon thyme in a smoothie too, right? I've added fresh thyme. I mean, so many things, right? There's so many beautiful herbs, but again, I'm not adding dried herbs in a smoothie, because with dried herbs, first of all, they're more potent, but you have to cook them off, or they're just too astringent and sharp in flavor, and we're not doing that with a smoothie, right? So always fresh, always fresh. Here's my really big tip with the magic is citrus zest. So I love a little pinch, sometimes more. Sometimes I'll add a quarter to a half to a whole teaspoon of zest, but it just depends on what the smoothie is, right? But I'm always starting really small, lime zest, lemon zest, orange zest, or it is just magic, right? Absolute magic in a smoothie. And I will often use it to add a lemony or a lime note or an orange note, but sometimes it's just to lift the flavors a little bit. So I might just add a pinch, and a pinch is enough. I might do a blend of lemon or lime zest and juice, just depends, right? The reason why I'm not putting a whole lemon or a whole lime in is that we don't want the pit that can turn it quite bitter, right? So I will take the time to grate the zest, then I'll peel the skin off, and then I might add the flesh, or a little bit of the flesh, for example, right? But there's a reason why we don't dip the whole thing in, right? It'll just get quite bitter and funky again, right? Another magic flavor is chocolate. Big lover of some raw cacao powder. If I want a chocolate element, right? Now, chocolate might be an accent flavor, right? Like, let's say I'm doing like a red velvet cake smoothie, right? I don't want it to be super chocolatey, but it needs a chocolate element. But I'm balancing it with some beets, for example. I might do some berries. You know what I mean? I'm kind of like mixing things together, right? But I love raw cacao powder because it's the the most nutrient dense form of chocolate. It's raw. It's got a lot of antioxidants, all that kind of stuff. But you could do, you could do unsweetened cocoa powder, which is the same plant, it's just been cooked, right? So that's another beautiful thing. Don't discount natural extracts that you would use for baking and other kinds of, you know, dessert recipes and things, right? So an eighth sometimes I'll do a teaspoon of vanilla, but remember, vanilla can also get a little bit sharp when it's in huge amounts and it's raw, right? So I'll always start really small, right? Often, most often, most often, it's an eighth to a quarter of a teaspoon, every once in a while, to half right, depending on what the recipe is, little bit of tiny, little splash of almond extract to boost the are getting that marzipan flavor, maybe in a dessert, right? That can be quite yummy with Roux boss tea, for example, right? A little tiny splash of peppermint extract. Gosh, that can really go to the back of your throat in huge quantities. So you're always going to start with a very, very, very, very, very small amount. The other things I like to do is use a little bit of Middle Eastern flavors, right? So I might use a little splash, little eighth of a teaspoon every once a while, it might be more of pure rose water, not rose syrup, but pure rose water or orange blossom water. Every once in a while, I might add just a tiny bit of pomegranate molasses or something like that, right? There's just so many incredible things you can add again, right? I would put sweeteners in the category of add the magic. I typically don't like to add a lot of added sugars to smoothies, but every once in a while you just have to, and it just can be a very small amount. You could use a small amount. You could use fruit juice concentrate. You could use Add a fresh date, a pit of date, into a smoothie. Is something that I will do a lot. You could use just a splash of maple syrup in a pie, in a glass smoothie. That's just for fun, right? Not, I wouldn't do that every day from a health perspective, but it can be amazing, right? Um, coconut nectar, yacon syrup, some people will. You even use lakuma powder or superfood powder, right, to add a touch of sweetness, right? You don't want to use that in huge amounts. A, it's expensive and B, it just then brings in a bit of a funky note, right? So, yeah, that's where I would put sweeteners. I don't typically add them a lot, but you know, you will see in some of my recipes, particularly the dessert in a glass. Fun kind of smoothies I will, I will absolutely use those things from time to time. And then an absolute non negotiable in every single smoothie I make for a touch of magic, is a pinch of salt, a pinch of high quality salt, right? So I love Celtic sea salt. You know that I've interviewed the CEO, Selena DeLong gray on the podcast months ago now. So check out that episode, because it's a great episode on the health benefits of salt, and her personal story is really quite fascinating. But any any high quality salt, there's lots of great quality salt, right, but I'm not talking about the iodized, heavily processed salt you get to the grocery store for 99 cents, right? The reason why we add salt is it helps to offset the as salt is alkaline forming, it helps to offset the acidic effects of sugars, right, in the fruits and vegetables. But more importantly, well, I don't know if it's. More importantly, but the other reason is that it's the Holy Trinity of flavors in any recipe, right? It's the salt, the sweet, the acid, right? We've got to have those three elements in any beautiful dish, right? To balance the flavors. It's the holy trinity of flavors, right? So adding a pinch of salt lifts the flavor. It brings out the flavor in fruits and vegetables, not just textured dishes and cooked dishes and salads or whatever you're making, but smoothies. So it might seem counterintuitive to you, but try your smoothie without it, then try it with it. It's different. So it's just something I always do, right? If you're worried about your sodium intake, I'd be watching the sodium intake and other things that you're doing right, a pinch is not going to make that much of a difference, right? So I hope that you can use some of these tips to make really delicious smoothies for yourself. I love definitely leave a review, put a post in the Facebook group about about how some of these things are, are panning out for you, right? And some of the the great creations that you've come up with. Another thing that I just want to say about smoothies is that we don't want to be gulping them like, that's what I see a lot of people doing, is just, you know,

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swishing them down, you know, in two seconds, right? So there is that adage of chewing your liquids. So we're always masticating and chewing our solid food really well, because all food has to be liquefied in the body in order to be digested properly. So there's that adage of chew your liquids and eat your solids, right? So the converse is true for liquids, right? So, yes, they're pre digested, but remember that the first phase of digestion begins in the mouth. And so with smoothies, we're typically including quite a lot of carbohydrates, right? So the salivary amylase in the in your saliva, they are the first Well, first of all, you take the first bite with your eyes, and then when you smell it your your the digestive process has already begun, right then when you swish it around in your mouth, you're giving the amylase in your saliva, the salivary amylase, an opportunity to start breaking down those carbohydrates. If you bypass that first phase of digestion, that's where you're not going to digest the food properly. That's where you will, you know, potentially have even more gas and bloating. So I do get quite a lot of emails from people who will say, Well, I just get really gassy and bloated when I consume smoothies. Well, like I said before, it may be that it's just too much natural sugar in one sitting. Could be the combination. Could be that you're intolerant to a particular food, it could just simply be that you're drinking it too quickly, right? So we see this all the time in skinny 60, in our 60 day reset, and when participants start implementing some of these strategies, it just changes everything. And also, obviously, in that in our program, we're providing very well balanced smoothies that include protein, fats and carbohydrates, right? So just swish your smoothies slowly, swish every little sip in your mouth a little bit before you swallow it. Sip them slowly over the course of 30 to 60 minutes for better blood sugar regulation and better digestion, right? The other thing about smoothies is, remember, you can always pour them into popsicle molds and make them into popsicles, right? So one thing that I'm really hyper aware that I did not talk about in this episode is protein powder. So that's that's a that's something that is lacking in a lot of smoothies. They're just too low in protein right? Now, you can add protein by adding nuts and seeds, by adding chia, hemp and flax seeds, you're going to get some amino acids from fruits and vegetables, right? So why didn't I talk about protein powder? So I'm not a big fan of protein powder. In the height of the blender girl trajectory, I was sent pretty much every protein powder that was made in the world, and everybody wanted my opinion on their protein powders. I worked with quite a lot of companies to help make their protein powders better, not just from a nutritional perspective, but from a textural perspective. A lot of them can be quite gritty. So this everything but the kitchen sink approach, which most protein powders market themselves under the banner of that where more is more, more is better. Look at all the things you're going to get in this protein powder. Oh my goodness. And there's this laundry list of ingredients. So that approach, to me, just leads to digestive distress. First of all, and again, this is something we talk a lot about in skinny 60, and it's a big part of the our nutrition education with our dietitians, is that with protein, more is just more. You've got to be taking in the appropriate amount of protein for your needs, right, which is determined on your weight and your activity levels and your health status, right? So everybody needs a different amount of protein, and also your body can only absorb so much protein per meal or snack. So on average, for the average person, it's about 2025, grams of protein, maybe 30 grams at the most, right? So this kind of. Putting tons of scoops of protein powder, you may just be taking in way too much protein than you can actually absorb in a smoothie. And I just find that when you stick huge amounts of protein powder in a smoothie, it just completely overtakes the flavor. Even if the protein powder has got a nice flavor, which most of them don't, in my opinion, it's kind of got this weird aftertaste, because a lot of them use sugar substitutes and stevia, and it's just got a really funky flavor. It's got way too much vanilla in it, so all you taste is protein powder, and I want to taste a full spectrum of flavors, right? So if you want to do protein powder, I would say, add it in much, much, much smaller amounts, so that you can create much more flavorful smoothies. The protein powders that I like are typically fermented, and I prefer to get my protein from Whole Foods, from nuts and seeds, right? Because, remember that protein powders are made up of isolates, right? So if you do do dairy and you're doing omnivore protein powders, they're typically made from whey, which is the most damaging part of dairy and it's the hardest to digest, right? If you're going plant proteins. It's typically pea protein, rice protein, things like that, right? They typically don't digest well with fruits from a food combining perspective, and it causes a lot of digestive gas and bloating, right? The protein powders that I like are made I like hemp protein, right? Because hemp is a complete protein. It contains all essential amino acids that the body can't produce, but it can get quite grassy in huge amounts, right? And can really turn smoothies pretty funky, right? Remember that you could do a mixture of different things, right? You might do a tablespoon of protein powder if you want to do that, and then add some nuts and seeds, right, to be getting that protein in, right? So adding a nut butter, for example, would be a better way. But you don't have to do just one thing. You could do a little bit of something in between all of that you're getting to maybe 10 grams of protein, or whatever it might be, right? So that's my philosophy about protein powder. Remember, also, like I said about the isolates, it's not real food unless it is just ground nuts and seeds, right? And you can get sprout living makes just ground pumpkin seeds, just ground sunflower seeds, where you could just stick that in a smoothie, particularly if you've got a high speed blender, right? But there are companies that do that. There's a lot of hemp protein on the market, right? And there are some high quality protein powders for sure, right? But just be looking at that stuff. And just remember, per food labeling guidelines, there's a lot of things included in packaged products that do not need to be disclosed because you've got to have a certain amount of something for for it to legally be disclosed. So food producers know this, right? So they're sticking all kinds of stuff in their products that they never have to tell you about. So my personal philosophy about this is that more is just more, right? And it can disrupt and overwhelm the body and cause all kinds of digestive issues, right? And remember, what happens if you cannot assimilate the protein in one sitting? What happens it gets stored as fat, right? So it's not actually going to serve you. So just be thinking about that. You know, with protein powder, right? We see this a lot with with people that go to the gym a lot, they're bodybuilders, and they're just using a lot of fake food right to meet their protein needs. And I think there's other ways that you can do it. So hopefully you'll be able to use some of the strategies that I shared to create smoothies that deliver protein, contain healthy fats right from your avocado, your coconut, your nuts and seeds, whatever, and also delivers quality as what we would call efficient carbohydrates that help the body to run better, right? So you want, again, you want to be creating smoothies that deliver balanced nutrition with protein, fats and carbs and quality foods and a variety of foods, not drinking the same smoothie every single day, right? You want to surprise your body and get in a variety of different things, and are also just mind blowing in flavor, so that you want to keep drinking them, right? I don't drink a smoothie every single day of my life. I kind of mix it up. That's what we typically do on the meal plans in skinny 60, right? We might do a smoothie, then the next day it might be a cooked dish. The next day it might be something savory. The next day it might be a chia pudding. The next day it might be, you know, overnight notes. The next day it might be a smoothie bowl or something, right? So just might be, you know, if you eat eggs, poached eggs and sauteed vegetables or something, right the next day. So just mixing it up and noticing how different foods feel in your body, how your body responds to it. Do you have more energy? Is your blood sugar regulated? Are you hungry 30 minutes later? Does it sustain you until lunch? You know, just be noticing how different smoothies affect your body and different foods All right, so I will put some links to some of the resources I talked about in the show notes. But again, please share with me by leaving a review and sharing in the Facebook group what resonated with you and what you found most helpful, but yeah, dust off that blender and make a really interesting smoothie. And yeah, email me through the blender girl website or through it has to be me and share with me what you're making.

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