Smoothies

I've never really been a big fan of the smoothie.  I have tried various recipes, but for a long time, the only ones I could find were made with either banana or yogurt.  I didn't like the tang of the yogurt smoothies and the banana ones.....well, the banana came screaming through any other taste that was in the smoothie and bananas are not my favorite thing to eat in the first place.

But, oh, Eureka and Hallelujah!  I found one that ends up nice and thick with no bananas or yogurt!!  The only drawback was that it called for a "handful" of spinach.  Blech!   Now, smoothie enthusiast friends of mine always say the same thing:  "you can't taste it!"  All I can assume is that their taste buds are dead, because they say the same thing about the banana, and, as I've said above, I can indeed taste it!  So, I just left out the spinach.  Now, In the interests of nutrition, in the future, I may slowly introduce spinach into my smoothie, like a couple leaves every day, until the point that I can taste it.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Anyway, here is the recipe (I tweaked a recipe I found here):

1.5 cups unsweetened plant milk (can contain vanilla or not)
1.25 cups frozen mixed berries (I used 1 cup raspberries and blackberries, and the quarter cup blueberries; you can mix-n-match to your taste but they have to be frozen)
1/2 cup of quick cooking rolled oats (these are one processing step further than old fashioned oats, still whole grain,though). 
1 tablespoon of cashew or almond butter (you can use peanut butter for a little more "earthy" taste)
1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
1/4 t cinnamon
up to 4 ice cubes (optional; the less you use, the thicker the end result)

Just chuck everything in the blender in the order given, and blend until smooth.  

As I said above, I used a 4:1 ratio of blackberries/raspberries to blueberries, but a local grocery chain has a cherry berry blend I want to try, and I may just do all blackberries or all cherries one of these times  I'll be doing some experimenting.  Also, since there's no yogurt, I may try the pumpkin spice smoothie again and if it's any less gag-inducing than the last time I tried it, that'll be another taste in my smoothie repertoire, lol.  

As for nutrition, it's a bit of a calorie bomb at around 440 and 14.7 g of fat but that's still only 30% of the calories from fat, and if the rest of your day has no more than 5 grams of fat you'll still be under the 10% recommended by the McDougall plan.  Good news is that it's got 13.5 grams of protein and 15.5 grams of fiber.  Pretty good for what amounts to a milkshake for breakfast!