Commuter Smoothie

This is a smoothie that I often make the night before I go to work. I put it in an insulated mug, refrigerate it, and drink it on my drive in. It's healthy, it packs in a lot of fiber, and it tastes pretty good, depending on your choice of liquid and frozen fruits.

(My other favorite breakfast is fruit and cheese.)

NOTE: Some dairy / frozen fruit combinations do not mix well when left overnight to party. If you feel inclined to use acidic fruits, you may want to try something else, or make it immediately before consuming.

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Recipe:

- One 4 oz block of soft tofu (i.e. 1/4 of a 1 lb package of soft tofu)

- 1 c frozen fruit: berries work well for this

- 1/2 frozen banana (I peel and cut the bananas in half, then freeze several together in Ziploc bags)

- 2 T of ground flax seed (golden or brown)

- 1 c milk: from the animal, nut, seed or grain of your choice (e.g. cow, rice, soy, hazelnut, hemp, etc.)

- approx 1/2 - 1 tsp of liquid Stevia (an all-natural sweetener), or you could use various sugars to taste

- 1 scoop of whey or soy protein powder (my favorite is "Designer Whey" from Trader Joe's). NOTE: Try to buy unsweetened protein powder - less weird stuff in it that way!

- dash of vanilla extract (all-natural, please!)


What To Do:

Put all ingredients into a blender. I tried to make sure I poured liquid over the protein powder, and that liquid wasn't the first ingredient in the blender, but other than that, order doesn't matter.

Blend till smooth.

Pour into a glass. This will probably make around 20 oz or so...

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NOTE: I found that rice milk or dairy milk tended to have the smoothest results. I often tried it with Silk soy milk, and I don't know why, but I suspect something in the soy milk would really make the mucilage in the flax seed thicken up, and it was almost impossible to drink the smoothie out of the mug while I was driving... your mileage may vary.