Smoothie making for dummies.

A good blender is essential. Picture and blender courtesy of OYL Contributor Teresa Lourenco.

Hi!

You want to incorporate healthy foods like smoothies into your life but don’t know where to start? I give you some easy simple tips so you can start right away!

STEP 1: Buy a GOOD BLENDER. The quality of the blender is really important because a smoothie really needs to be blended well to get best result for taste and texture. The more watts usually means better crushing of tough foods like kale or ice. I like the ones with a square glass container as it helps the blending process. (foods are thrown into the corner and bounce back into the middle.) There are many good ones. Vitamix, Magimix and Breville are good brands. Check out reviews online before you buy yours. the sound of the machine while working is important too. I don’t like it when it is making too much noise.

Blender I have at my home in the Netherlands

STEP 2: Work with FRESH CLEAN FOODS. The most important thing is that you always work with foods that are good to eat. Not going bad.  And cleaned thoroughly. As it changes the flavor right away and maybe ruins the whole smoothie if you put in only one ingredient that is not totally clean or fresh. leafy Greens are great as they have A LOT of essential minerals and vitamins. in a smoothie with fruits you won’t taste it but you take it in. Try it! Options are: Spinach, Kale, Parsley Collard Greens, Romaine.. anything you like. They are good juiced too :) Other vegetables like carrots and beets can work too. The more vegetables you put in, the more fruits you should add to balance the flavor out. Find more smoothie recipes here on organiceyourlife.com  in the recipes section, right here.

OYL contributor Joey Holthaus also likes to make smoothies with fresh ingredients. Doesn't it look great?

STEP 3: SAFETY. Place the blender in a safe place when you work with it and make sure the lid is tight.

 FORMULA OF A SMOOTHIE:

1. 1/3 liquid (That can be anything you like: water, almond milk, rice milk, milk, hemp milk, soy milk etc)

2. 2/3 fruits and vegetables you want to blend. (the more fruits, the sweeter it will taste.)

3. spoonful of extra ingredients like vitamin powders.

blending takes +/- 15 seconds. So making this is like less than 5 minutes with cleaning the ingredients and the blender included!

So my favorite smoothie is:

-Almond milk

-Kale

-Banana

-Vitamineral or Detox powder or any healthy powder.

Just blend and enjoy! Or I get it at Juice Generation at Equinox Gym, that’s easy too ;)

Juice Generation smoothie (Almond milk, kale, banana, Detox powder)

Love, Lonneke