My daily addiction:
1 cup skim milk (90 calories)
1 cup fat free yogurt (any berry flavor) (100 calories)
2 fistfuls of frozen blueberries (1 cup = less than 85 calories)
6 frozen strawberries (about 5 calories each)
blend until purple.
An antioxidant, vitamin C loaded snack that tastes like dessert for around 300 calories!
I’ve spent decades of my life not eating fruit on a daily basis. I’ve gone weeks at a time without eating any fruit. Not because I don’t like it, because I really like most fruits. It just doesn’t occur to me to eat any. Multiple times per year, I make resolutions to eat just ONE fruit per day. Finally, I included it on my fitness log (see the sidebar to the right) to try and put myself in a situation where I have to be accountable.
I also have a problem getting enough calories, which causes my metabolism to drop. I tend to forget to eat.
Smoothies solve both problems. I’m actually consuming fruit on a daily basis for the first time in my life and making them is easy and takes less than 5 minutes, so eating doesn’t intrude on my day. It doesn’t hurt that I actually crave them now.
I stumbled upon the smoothie idea while trying to get PinkGirl to consume some sort of nourishment in the morning. Trying to get that girl to eat breakfast before school is a chore! A few friends suggested I try smoothies and since PinkGirl loves Planet Smoothie, I thought it might work. It only took about 3 or 4 months to finally hit on a recipe that I actually liked. (for ME, not her. She still wavers about what she likes. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a recipe she really likes.)
But I was having blender issues. If the Vitamix is the BMW of blenders, it seems my little Oster was the VW bug of blenders. It was either forming a little pocket of air at the bottom and doing nothing or it was spinning like crazy and only blending the bottom half of my smoothie. I had to add more and more milk to thin it out so the blender would actually blend the entire smoothie.
I put a new blender on my Christmas list.
Which really irritated me because I own an Oster Kitchen Center with nearly every possible attachment, similar to this one:
It transforms from a blender to a chopper to a slicer to a mixer to a juicer to a . . . it does everything but clean itself. We got one as a wedding present from my husband’s parents and about 10 years ago, it died and I replaced it at our church’s WHALE of a Sale. Since all Oster attachments are interchangeable with every Oster made, I even bought a newer countertop blender to switch to the chopper when I needed it:
So I was not looking forward to having a different blender on my countertop. It was going to mess up my system.
FirstHusband surprised me with an early Christmas present: An Oster Milkshake blade for my blender!
My little Oster just got tricked out!
And THIS ONE is also on its way, so we’ll see which one works better.
And now Firsthusband BAM is FavoriteHusband..
Add raw spinach to your smoothies. You won’t be able to tell and you’ll be getting more greens. Plus, easier to absorb the iron in the spinach when taken with Vit C provided by fruit.
Looking for a pdf of the Oster Kitchen Center recipe/instruction manual circa 1980s? Any ideas?
Hey Julie, I still have my original booklet. Are you looking for a particular recipe? The booklet is 110 pages long, so making a PDF would take a while…