For the past several years, I’ve started the new year with a new (at least to me) cookbook to work my way through in as much of its entirety as possible. This coming year, I’ll be starting with two. One of them is Green Kitchen Smoothies. The title makes it pretty obvious what the main focus of the book is. One of the first interesting things is that the first few pages are actually useful, and not just generic ingredient or equipment reviews. The ingredient stuff is actually focused on smoothie specific things like smoothie versus juice, the anatomy of a really good smoothie, how to achieve certain flavor types or adjust to certain tastes (sweetness levels and things like that). The equipment section gets into questions like bender vs food processor, and then, before we get to the smoothies, there are a few recipes for smoothie adjacent items like muesli, nut butters, and granola. Given that there’s only a few pages and there are smoothie relevant notes each time, some of the info is pretty useful and not intrusive.
The actual recipes are pretty straightforward, with mostly common ingredients and procedures. ONE of the main reason I picked this particular book up, besides the obvious healthy attempt to start the year, is that it’s got several recipes for two key veggies that I have yet to find a way to like that look promising. I’m not terribly picky, and I’ve been practically vegetarian for about 13 years or so; however, I don’t like fresh beets, and I don’t like fennel. I am crossing my fingers that I might find a way to be ok with fennel by mixing it with orange, mixed berries, avocado and ginger (for example). Same for fresh beets, accompanied by dates, avocado, cacao, and soy milk (again, for example). If it turns out that these options don’t work out for me, there is at least one more thing to try (and use up the rest of the veggies) for both.
I’m also hopeful for some of the smoothie adjacent suggestions like “Upside-down Breakfast” which is basically a parfait in a jar designed for grab-and-go mornings (which I tend to do a lot of). The bottom layer is muesli, then a yogurt layer, than the top half is a lightly spiced spinach, berry, ‘nana smoothie. There’s also a handful of juices towards the end that might be worth trying, such as the “Spicy Apple $ Carrot Hot Toddy” which features apple and carrot, along with ginger (fresh), and what you might call a pie spice bland (cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, and clove). And yes, there’s a note on how much rum to add if you want to go that way too. I don’t actually have a juicer, nor do I intend on investing in one, so if I go for this one, it would more properly be a smoothie but that’s fine; it’s just a little more fiber.