Two, two, two recipes in one (blog)!

I was first introduced to the idea of a sweet spinach smoothie this past summer when a friend of mine entered hers into a smoothie contest. At the time, I had every intention of trying it, but then...I forgot. That is until the other day when another friend posted a link to a different green smoothie on facebook.
I had lost the link to my friend's recipe, and I would have loved to try the second recipe, but living in Korea, I don't have access to many of the ingredients listed, so I found a different recipe and tried it out.

My first try...not love at first sip. The recipe called for milk, spinach, berries, a clementine, a banana, and some water. In honesty, the flavors were good, but it was a bit too much like juice for my taste, and the oranges and spinach created a stringy aspect, as well. I like my smoothies to have a real creamy texture, and was really disappointed in this. My husband is a genius, though, and quickly picked up on the fact that frozen tangerines would cut back on the juiciness. Duh, right? So after his suggestion, I tried again, and this is what I did:

Makes 2 servings:
1 85g tub of plain yogurt- 65 kcal
100ml skim milk- 30 kcal
2c spinach- 14 kcal
(I blended these ingredients at this point, to ensure the spinach blended better than the last time)
62g (~half of a medium) banana- 56 kcal
100g frozen tangerine sections- 52 kcal
110g frozen strawberries- 40 kcal
78g frozen blueberries- 40 kcal
~1/3c water
blend!

total calories: 297 (148.5 each serving!)
and you know what else?
It was taaasty:)
Next time I make this, I'm only going to use 1/4 of a banana, since bananas can be so overpowering- but otherwise, I don't think I would change a thing!


Bonus:
My husband made a DELICIOUS dinner tonight! The idea came from what my dad always called Swiss Steak. My dad's version usually consisted of thinly cut strips of steak pan-fried with sliced tomatoes and topped with pepper. JD (that's the husband) likes to play around with this recipe a little bit, and tonight we decided to swap steak for chicken, flavor with fajita seasonings, and add mushrooms and onions (so it's kind of a lot like fajitas, in the end...). It was so good! Paired with a salad, I call it perfection.

Here's the recipe:

167g button mushrooms- 25 kcal

1can sliced tomatoes- 75 kcal

1medium white onion- 47 kcal

1 package fajita mix- 120 kcal

(that seemed kind of high to us...)

280g chicken (raw)- 320 kcal

mix ingredients in a lightly-sprayed pan (or a wok if you have one) until the chicken is fully cooked
Easy-peasy!

total calories- 588

~makes about 3 servings @ 196 kcal per serving!

Pumpkin...custard?

So, I got a little cocky tonight. I had found myself down somewhat of a rabbit hole of "healthy snacks". I'm a bit of a smoothie nut, and found this interesting idea for a pumpkin smoothie. I had remembered that my husband and I found a can of pumpkin filling in our local black market store (we live in South Korea, btw. Things like pumpkin filling are a rarity for us), and decided to pounce. This was, of course, back in November when we had Thanksgiving fever. Cut to present day, and it's still sitting in our cabinet...of course.
Anyway, after I read the ingredients I thought: I CAN IMPROVE ON THIS RECIPE! (meaning I thought I could make it lighter and still delish)

this is what I did:
170g Sweet Potato yogurt- 160kcal (I grabbed this without paying much attention...I thought it was peach. Who would have EVER imagined it would actually be Sweet Potato, right? The flavor is subtle, but I just can't bring myself to eat it plain. I thought this was a nice occasion for it.)
2c Pumpkin Filling- 160kcal
100ml skim milk- 30 kcal
15g Honey Graham Crackers- 70 kcal (and it's amazing we even had that)
and what ended up being about:
3 tsp ground cinnamon- 18 kcal
5 packets generic sweetener- 0 kcal
lots of ice- 0kcal

Blennnnnnnnnnd, and- VOILA! We had some mildly decent tasting custard.
It certainly wasn't the best, but for 11okcal/pop (around 200g/serving [4])...I don't know that you could do much better? I think the original recipe probably beats the pants off of what I came up with, though.

What I would do different:
Use vanilla yogurt
Use a *little* more yogurt and a *little* less filling
Use more milk? The above change might do the trick for that, though.
Freeze the filling like the recipe called for (but who has time for that, right?!)
Read the recipe a little closer and sprinkle the graham crackers on top of the finished product instead of blending with the rest of the ingredients...oy, Jamie.


Here's a smoothie I make that doesn't suck:
170g plain yogurt- 120kcal
200ml skim milk- 60kcal
*160g (1c-ish) frozen strawberries- 57kcal
*100g (a little less than 1c?) frozen mango- 64kcal
*70g (1/2c?) frozen pineapple chunks- 50kcal

blennnnnnnnnd, and- VOILA! Probably my favorite smoothie. At 176kcal/serving (about 2 320g servings), it's a great breakfast item or snack!

*The gram figures there might not be exact...I kind of guessed. This is pretty darn close, though.


I know this entry is not a great one for introducing my new blog, but I will do that next (cause this was more fun)...I'm breaking the mold.