Blueberry Smoothie—A Healthy Morning Ritual

Day 3 of our “One Month Raw Food Cleanse”
For several years, my husband and I started almost every morning with some sort of smoothie. After we got our Vita Mix and found that this blender could grind up a 2 by 4, we had fun developing “the ultimate” concoctions. Often in a hurry to get to work, we’d throw these drinks in tall containers and sip them throughout the morning. While people at work were drinking their Starbucks lattes, we’d be sitting in meetings in our respective companies, sipping these purple or green mixtures, much to the dismay of our co-workers. “What is that thing”, was the usual question I’d get—especially when I brought in a heavy green drink.

Since I bought an enormous bag of organic blueberries this week, I’ve been making blueberry smoothies so I’ll share this recipe today. I know it’s still cold and you probably may want something warmer in the morning, but this is a wonderful, healthy drink either for breakfast or for a late day snack.

I typically start out with raw nut milk. If you are not completely raw, you can use soymilk or rice milk. When I use nut milk, I like to balance out the omega 6 fatty acids from the nuts with a little flaxseed oil. I also throw in a few brazil nuts to get my daily selenium requirement as selenium is a potent and important antioxidant. A green powder is also a healthy addition. My favorite one right now is Health Force Nutritional’s Vitamineral Green. (By the way, I don’t get paid to mention different brands on my blog, I‘m just sharing good products that I have discovered.) I use this product because it not only has healthy green foods like wheat and barley grass, but it also has spirulina, chlorella, sea vegetables, a full spectrum of digestive enzymes, non-synthetic vitamins and minerals from natural food sources, probiotics and other good stuff. I list 1 teaspoon per serving in the recipe but as your body gets used to it, you can increase it to a tablespoon if you wish. Don’t start out with too much too soon as it can be quite “cleansing”. It’s available online at Health Force Nutritional’s website. I also found it on Amazon.

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Blueberry Smoothie [2 servings]
4 Brazil nuts
12 almonds
2 cups cold filtered water
6 drops liquid stevia (or 2 soaked dates)
1 cup frozen organic blueberries
1 large banana
1 medium apple
1/2 tablespoon cold pressed flaxseed oil
2 teaspoons Vitamineral green powder (or your favorite green powder)

If you have a Vita Mix or other high powered, high speed blender, you can put everything in at once, blend well and serve. If you don’t have one, start out by putting the nuts, stevia (or soaked dates) and water into a blender. Blend well, put the resulting liquid through a strainer, and strain out the nut solids. Return the strained liquid into the blender with the rest of the ingredients, blend well and serve.

Per serving: 295 calories, 10 g fat, 1.5 g saturated fat, zero g cholesterol, 4 g protein, 51.5 g carbohydrates, 8.8 g fiber, 1.9 g omega 3 and 2.5 g omega 6. This recipe provides a 1.3 to 1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3. It also provides 96 mcg of selenium.

Menu for Day 3
A blueberry smoothie for breakfast, lunch is vegan coleslaw with creamy cashew dressing (see April 16, 2009) with raw veggie-seed crackers (see April 23, 2009). I have a dinner meeting tonight at the Berkley faculty club so I’m hoping I can find something raw there but if I don’t, I will not stress. It’s important to do the best you can but when you get into a situation where it’s just going to be impossible. Just eat what’s there and get back on your cleanse the next morning!

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