Healthy Beauty- Easy Access Smoothie Cups

This week has been kinda a fail week for me, but I sort of guessed it would! I started off strong, then had to go out of town for a few days, and now my mom is visiting, so my healthy happy exercise train has kinda been put on hold. It’s crazy how you can start to miss the feeling of eating well and exercising! My mom and I spent most of yesterday cleaning out my apartment, but we did make a trip to the grocery store and I made sure to pick up some produce to start making my green smoothies again :) I know I showed a green smoothie recipe on my first Healthy Beauty post, but I make it a bit different now, and wanted to share!

This is an easy way to make smoothies ahead of time for the week. I saw this on Pinterest and loved the idea of freezing smoothies in muffin cups to get individual sized portions so I could make a batch at the beginning of the week and not have to worry about chopping up veggies and fruit.. just pop in one of the smoothie cups into the blender with some water, add my boosters, and its good to go!

The Smoothie base I made here includes:

• organic baby spinach (I prefer using kale, but my grocery store was out, so baby spinach is my next choice. If you don’t have a crazy blender, I recommend baby spinach anyways because it should break up easy without having little chunks)
• about 1/2 cup water
• an organic fuji apple (apples are the #1 food that you should ALWAYS try and get organic!)
• Some Acai juice
• a frozen banana
• handful of frozen strawberries
• Juice of a lemon

I blend this in stages.. Spinach and water first, then add the apple and acai smoothie pack, then the bananas, strawberry, and lemon. If I was drinking this straight, I would add a LOT more water (I like these smoothies to be really thin) but because these are sort of the “concentrated” version to be frozen, I only add enough to blend everything.

 

Once it’s smooth, I divide the smoothie into silicone muffin cups. The first time I did this I did it in a regular metal muffin pan, and it was a niiiiightmare! The cups were half thawed before they could pop out of the tin, and it was a huge mess. With the silicone cups, they just peel right off. This is SO convenient! (And yes, I know the color isn’t the prettiest smoothie color ever, but it doesn’t taste bad at all, and is super healthy!!)

 

I bought these large silicone muffin cups at Sur La Table yesterday- they’re the size of the big muffins you can get at places like Starbucks, not the general size. You could also make these with normal silicone muffin cups, but you’ll just need twice as many. It actually might be easier to use smaller silicone cups, as I noticed that it took a lot more effort for my blender to break up this giant block of frozen smoothie than it would for smaller pieces. The only downside is smaller cups take up more room in the freezer, and you also would use two per smoothie.

I fill these up on a little metal sheet made to go into the toaster oven (this smoothie made 4 jumbo cups, and I fit perfectly on the small metal sheet!) and pop it into the freezer overnight. Once they are frozen, I just put them into a tupperware container together.

This is the first time I tried this recipe with these jumbo cups, and I think next time I’ll probably add 50% more, just so I can get two more cups full and have enough for the week.

When I remake these for a morning smoothie, it’s sooo much more simple than making the smoothie from scratch everyday! All I do is put the smoothie cup in the blender, add maybe a cup of water, and then add my boosters- vanilla protein powder, green super food powder, and chia seeds. These are great for the green smoothie, they really make it a balanced meal!

• Protein Powder: There isn’t much protein in the smoothie cup itself, it’s really the main thing it is missing, so this balances that out
• Green Super Food Powder: A blend of  wheat grass, barley grass, alfalfa, and other organic ingredients that make a great addition to a smoothie. Lots of antioxidants and vitamins in just one scoop!
• Chia Seeds: This is a new addition for me. I have been adding ground flaxseed to my smoothies, but decided to try Chia Seeds because they are high in fiber and have Omega-3, which is really important (especially if you aren’t a fish lover!)

I soak the chia seeds in the water before blending (the instructions suggest it, and since I’m new to it I figured I might as well follow that. Anyone know if this is necessary?) and then blend everything together! This is my happy, healthy morning drink- it fills me up, is easy and fast to make and drink, and leaves me feeling happy, energetic, and ready to go!

This week’s goals: Back to shredding (that week long break really threw me off!) S-T-R-E-T-C-H, and lotsa crunches! Also, more dance breaks :)

-Leesha