Smoothies
The Creamy Green Smoothie
low carb vegan recipe for your daily ‘super super’ food
The Creamy Green Smoothie is something I recommend drinking daily (or almost every day) since it’s a ‘super super’ food because it combines many foods in themselves considered to be super foods!
One batch of this smoothie makes 5 large glasses (in my blender at least), which I usually spread out over two days, though I have been known to drink all 5 in one day!
I use a large (2.5 liter) heavy duty blender for this, because it has to handle a lot of ingredients:
1 liter of unsweetened plain or vanilla almond milk (or use soy if you prefer)
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 scoops of vegan protein powder supplement
2 tbsp of flaxseed oil
½ cup of ground flax seed, chia seed and hemp hearts blend
2 tsp of (fine powdered) psyllium husks
1 heaping tsp of matcha powder
1 heaping tsp of the Super Spice blend
1 ½–2 cups of sliced (thawed from frozen) avocado
3 tbsp of peanut or nut/seed butter
1 cup green tea
1 bag of frozen broccoli or kale (you can place it in frozen directly)
Variation: use fresh greens instead of previously frozen, such as half a box of baby spinach, or fresh green mix, or kale.
Variation: you can also add powdered spirulina (algae), though it can be a bit messy as it gets sticky when wet.
Makes 5 servings.
Usually to make something creamy, you add cream! The creaminess of this smoothie comes from the combination of peanut (or other nut and seed) butter, avocado chunks and the flax oil (which is full of polyunsaturated fats).
I used to make this smoothie with two liters of almond milk, but I decided that overdosing on calcium is probably not a great idea. So, the current recipe uses just one liter of almond milk (unsweetened, plain or vanilla) and makes up for the extra liquid needed with green tea and water.
Note that chia seeds, hemp hearts and flaxseed together provide the amino acids threonine and lysine, which are lacking in seitan, and so if you go with seitan as a major source of protein, you are picking up these missing amino acids in the smoothie instead.
Remember, you don’t have to combine all amino acids in a single meal to get a complete protein — your body can get the protein it needs if the amino acids are consumed in your daily diet as a whole.
In Asian supermarkets, it’s usually easy to find large bottles of unsweetened green tea, so I stockpile these in the pantry, and in the smoothie I add a cup. Once all the ingredients are in, top off the rest of the blender with water, making sure to keep a couple inches free at the top, so it doesn’t overspill or spurt out when blending.
The amount of water you add at the end affects how creamy or watery or thick the resultant smoothie is. Over time, you will get the hang of it and eyeball the proportions correctly to get it creamy every time.
