Rourke's Random Musings

I make smoothies every morning before work. I know, I know; how very California of me. Years before moving to California I bought a blender and started trying to make smoothies. The blender came out a couple of times, but making smoothies was always too much work to do regularly. What’s different now? I’ve learned how to blend quickly and easily.

The smoothie recipes that you find in cookbooks and in smoothie books are all fairly complicated and take too long to prepare. I’m going to explain how I make great tasting smoothies quickly and without hassle. These days it takes me less than five minutes to make two smoothies, pour them into to-go cups, wash out the blender, and clean off the counter top.

So, what do you need to make these amazing, quick, healthy smoothies?

• yogurt
• liquid: soy milk and apple juice work well
• frozen fruit

That’s it.

Making daily smoothies is hard on most blenders. I went through three different blenders before I bought the Oster Classic Blender. The other blenders I bought (the $50-ish dollar models from the top three vendors) all failed after a few months of daily smoothie making because the blades are connected to the drive motor using plastic gears. For some reason the Oster is the only blender in this price range that uses a metal gear to drive the blades. That metal piece seems to make a huge difference when you’re grinding up frozen fruit every morning. You should be warned, though, the Oster is the loudest blender in this price range I tried.

The smoothies I make are all yogurt based, so they’re pretty healthy. Over time, I’ve also started using Silk vanilla soy milk instead of fruit juices. The soy taste took a little getting used to, but now I really like it. I’d recommend you start with apple juice, as that flavor profile has broader appeal.

Here’s the basic order of things for making 2.5 cups (20 oz) of smoothie:

1. empty an 8oz yogurt (vanilla or banilla) into the blender cup
2. pour in a liquid until you fill the blender cup to 1.5 cups
3. add about 8 oz. of frozen fruit to the blender
4. blend until smooth

That’s it. You can easily measure the amounts by eye or by using the measurements on the blender cup, so things go very quickly. The order is important, as adding the ingredients in the wrong order makes it harder to get everything to blend smooth.

You can vary the ratio of yogurt:liquid:frozen fruit to taste, but the more solid:liquid you get the harder its going to be to get it to blend together. I like my smoothies thick so I’ll often add more frozen fruit. If it doesn’t blend at first I’ll try rocking the blender back and forth while it’s running (grabbing at the top and just letting it pivot from the base). If that doesn’t work, I’ll stop the blender, take the pitcher off and shake it, and then try blending again.

Some easy starter smoothie recipes might be:

• vanilla yogurt, frozen pineapple, and apple juice
• banilla yogurt, frozen blueberries, and apple juice
• banilla yogurt, frozen strawberries and bananas, and apple juice

If you like the smoothies with apple juice, give the Silk soy milk a try. To me, the smoothies taste better with the soy milk. Let me know what you think by commenting below. I’ll get more specific in future posts.