Creamy Avocado Chocolate Milkshake

My family is not into celebrations of any kind. However, I wanted to make an exception today, in a simple way. So, to celebrate Father's day in a small but memorable way, I thought of making some avocado chocolate pudding. I thought it would be as easy as pulsing avocados with some cocoa powder and sprinkling some zero calorie sweetener to make a truly healthy, flavorful, sugar-free dessert that all of us could enjoy without any guilt. But, in my enthusiasm, I either added too many avocados or too much cocoa powder, because what turned out to be a luscious looking buttery pudding had an unpleasant and bitter after taste that disappointed me. Wondering how to fix the buttery bitter-chocolate without adding  lots of sugar, I started adding one thing after another and ended up with a decent creamy milkshake!

The milkshake is not completely sugar-free, but it is still low in sugar and (I think) a much healthier substitute to regular creamy milkshake. 

This is not so much as a recipe as it is a record of my memory of spending Father's day with my wonderful father.

Green (Monster) Smoothie

We usually prepare a week's worth of smoothies every weekend for a quick breakfast/evening "snack" when we are too tired to make something. Our favorite smoothie combination is berries, banana, apples, natural protein powder, and milk. And no sugar ever. This week, inspired by the Green Monster Movement, I tried a green smoothie and it turned out yummy! It does need more ingredients than a regular fruit smoothie that requires just fruits, milk and protein powder. But the nutritive value of this green smoothie far outweighs the cost of spending a few minutes to assemble the ingredients. And it tastes good too! The husband detests kale and raw spinach, but even he called it "decent", which is saying something. I don't receive any superlative adulation ever (or hardly any adulation for that matter) so "decent" and "okay" are gold standards to aspire!

This smoothie is nutritious, easy to make, filling, and pleasant on the palate. I added a bunch of other ingredients to mask the bitterness and raw taste of Kale. Peanut butter and yogurt are for protein and probiotics, flax seeds are for fiber and omega-fatty acids, almonds for texture, taste, and more omega goodness, and maple syrup for flavor and slight sweetness.

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup blueberries
2. 1 banana
3. 3 handfuls spinach
4. 2 handfuls torn Kale leaves (about 4 leaves)
5. 1/3 cup yogurt
6. low fat milk (as needed to thin the smoothie to desired consistency)
7. 1/2 cup almonds
8. 1/4 cup peanut butter
9. 3 tablespoons flax seeds, or ground flax seeds
10. 2 tablespoons maple syrup (optional of course)

Blend everything together to make a yummy smoothie! This makes 5 cups of smoothie. You can get creative and add other combinations of fruits, nuts, cocoa powder etc. I plan to add spirulina powder and wheat grass the next time. My smoothies are going green from today!

Cantaloupe-Banana Smoothie

I know, why act all pompous and call it smoothie when it’s just a milk-shake? Yeah, but doesn’t the term “smoothie” sound cute, funny, and babyish? I think some little kid at some point called a milk-shake a “smoothie” (“Mommy, I want that smoothy-smoothy drink”), and the dad who overheard it decided to revamp the term milk-shake to smoothie, because the people of this land always crave to establish their own unique identity. If the rest of the world calls something by a certain name, the people here will go to any lengths to rechristen it and adapt it to their ways.

So well, smoothie or milk-shake, the preparation of this drink cannot be more intuitive and easy. Of the several dreams and inane thoughts I have, starting a smoothie place used to be one such brainwave. It’s ridiculously easy to mash together a bunch of different combinations of fruits, add a splash of milk, cream, or yogurt, a bit of sweetness, and a few nuts or extra flavors, and you get an endless array of “healthy” drinks that people never tire of. Every time I wait in line at Jamba Juice, I sigh.

Every so often, I ambitiously buy a cartload of fresh fruits thinking that I would religiously eat them every single day. But time has a way of playing tricks on us. By the time I remember to pick out one huge fruit from the fridge, an unpleasant sight awaits me. I face an ultimatum posed by the fruits - eat us within the next two days before we hit the road to rapid decline. And so, driven by such desperation, I plonk all the assortment of fruits into a blender, pour some milk, add a dash of honey, give everything a whir, and I have four glasses of filling smoothie for breakfast and pre-dinner nourishment.

This time I picked a cantaloupe and watermelon, envisaging eating cubes of them after dinner. When I didn’t see that happening for the first two days, I decided to be proactive. The result was a cantaloupe-banana smoothie.

Ingredients:

1. Half of a medium-sized cantaloupe (peeled and cubed)
2. One banana
3. 4 cups of milk (or more depending on how thick you like your smoothie)
4. 1 teaspoon of chocolate powder (I use Ovaltine)
5. 1 Tablespoon of honey (optional; skip, if you like your smoothie to be a little less on sweet)
6. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)

Preparation:

Dump everything into a blender and puree till smooth.

As I mentioned, the adaptions are numerous. Get creative! I always like adding banana to most smoothies because I like the texture, the flavor and yummy consistency it brings to the drink. At one point, inspired by Anand’s words, I used to add a spoon of protein powder instead of chocolate powder. I could then call it a fruity-protein drink. 

You can also add yogurt along with a bit of milk, and you get Lassi! We tried cantaloupe lassi (without banana) recently, and it came out decently. I garnished the Lassi with a teaspoon of cardamom powder, and it tasted really good - almost like dessert! 

Also, I typically don’t use citrus fruits like orange, lemon, grapefruit etc. I fear that the acidity would curdle the milk. Berries and bananas are perfect for smoothies. Without the chocolate and the honey, a glass of this smoothie is a nutritious and filling drink. It’s a perfect and easy breakfast for non-morning people like me who have barely enough time to get ready and rush. But this is also an easy way of adding calories - just because something has healthy ingredients doesn’t make the resulting output always healthy. Everything in moderation - that’s the mantra!