Hi, Hivers!
I hope everyone is healthy and enjoying their smoothies 😁
First of all, thank you so much, @amazingdrinks & @sirenahippie for hosting this contest and @ecency & @melinda010100 for sponsoring it 🖤
You can learn about this contest here 🍹 I hope you can participate; it's definitely easy, and you'll love it. I hope my friend @morenaluna can participate 😃
Today I feel lucky that I can finally enjoy a short vacation and it's such a simple but divine pleasure to start it off with an energizing and delicious smoothie.
The last week of the semester is madness; I have lots of papers to check, last minute requests to take care of, and files to put in order, besides working a second job and trying to live life decently. Yesterday, I was finally able to resume my bike rides around the city; and before charging myself with the radiant sunshine and the good energy of this sky above us in Cumaná, I went for my first battery charger, this smoothie of cocoa, "topocho" banana, and roasted peanuts, with vegetable milks, aromatic spices, and only a little cane sugar.
This smoothie is a vegan bomb! And it tastes great with stevia if it's your choice. It's great for everybody--who's not allergic to peanuts--, children and adults, and so delicious.
Now, please allow me to share a bit of relevant information about the main ingredients of this smoothie: cocoa, ripe "topocho" bananas, and peanuts. Surely many of you will know more than I do 🤣
Cocoa
A kilo of good quality cocoa powder costs between 12 and 20 USD in my city. The brand I'm using today has an intermediate cost but its quality is among the best: Savoy cocoa powder has no added sugar and is 100% cocoa.
Cocoa is good for our overall health. It's good for our heart, liver, emotions, and mood. Like magic, huh! I've read that if you eat some cocoa every day (without sugar), it helps our system lower blood pressure and improve blood flow--an issue I have to deal with--, while increasing good cholesterol and helping us feel good: alert and happy. What I like the most is that personally, cocoa helps me reduce anxiety and the urge to eat things I shouldn't, e.g. things with gluten.
"Topocho" Bananas
Some of you who have been so kind to read other posts I've shared here on Hive may remember that I get a lot of these every other month because my comadre grows them in her backyard. I use them still unripe for some recipes, like bread and soups; then they ripen and become good to eat them as common fruit or for other recipes, such as cakes and smoothies. These I got for free, but if you go to the Public Market in my city, you can buy them at very low cost: probably 15-20 units for 1 USD.
This variety of banana is popular in my country. It's a potent source of antioxidants and helps protect our skin from the sun. In Cumaná,my hometown, this is an excellent food to consume daily, since here the shining sun that looks so beautiful from the distance and is said to keep sadness away, is also truly harmful when it comes to the intense incidence of UV rays on our skin, which not only accelerates the aging of our skin, but can also lead to skin cancer (which can soon spread to other parts of our body).
Eating topochos regularly will provide you with a good deal of vitamins B6 and C, good for our tissues and to help our skin withstand the intense sun. Eating topochos regularly will also help your bones and muscles, because besides iron (good for producing hemoglobin) and potassium (good for kidney and heart function), it has several important minerals: calcium, phosphorus, zinc and magnesium.
Peanuts
If, like me, you are lucky enough not to be allergic to peanuts, you've probably eaten them many times as a healthy snack, probably salted, or in candy form: caramelized or in brittles.
More rarely in my country, you'll see peanuts in salads, rice dishes and other (mostly gourmet) foods. It turns out that peanuts are amazing in smoothies and shakes,too, as they help make them creamy and nutritious.
Many things are said about peanuts in my hometown, such as that they improve digestion and that if you eat them frequently, you will live longer and healthier; this makes sense to me, as I have read that eating half a handful of peanuts once or twice a week improves digestion and heart function, while reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Our stomach is our second brain and moderate peanut intake helps keep it healthier.
The price of peanuts varies a lot in my city, depending on whether they come raw or roasted, shelled or unshelled. I've used them today for the blend of my smoothie and also to decorate it in the jars, along with unsweetened dark chocolate chips; I took them out of the freezer, where they have been for months; I keep them in a double bag, unsalted, raw and shelled, but still with the seed coat that comes attached to the cotyledon.
These peanuts were a gift (3 kilos). But if you go to the super, you'll have to pay 7-12$ per kilo (shelled), and they'll probably be roasted already and without the protective layer of the cotyledon (seed coat), which will cause them to be damaged faster.
Time to Smoothie!
According to the rules of this contest, we must use at least 7 ingredients. I've used the following:
- 1/2 cup of homemade coconut milk
- 1/2 cup of almond milk Greenstar.
- 2 cups of ripe topocho bananas + 1 little overripe banana
- 1 tablespoon Savoy cocoa powder (unsweetened)
- 2 handfuls of roasted peanuts (shelled and seeded)
- 1 tablespoon cane sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon,
- Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence
- Pinch of salt
- chocolate chips and extra peanuts to decorate
7 easy steps to a delicious super vegan smoothie.
1- Ideally, use frozen fruit to add the least amount of ice (water) to our smoothie. This way it'll be creamier and with a more intense flavor. So freeze the sliced bananas the night before, or at least a couple of hours before.
2- Roast the peanuts in advance and let them cool. I baked them in my small electric oven, with heat up and down, at 250 °F x 20 minutes. The crunchier the peanuts, the creamier the smoothie.
3- Mix the ingredients:
- Choose a method to blend and the glasses to serve your smoothie--for example, I loved the method and glasses @hindavi used for hers--. I'd thought about using my Oster Blend 'N Go that comes with a lid and wide reusable straw, but I wouldn't have been able to make a nice looking smoothie. Today I've decided to serve our drinks in reused jars, which will allow me to put something decorative on top, usual when it comes to smoothies. So I used my cheap but special smoothie blender (Hamilton Beach) instead of the Oster bullet blender; my smoothie blender has a special system called Wave~Action® which continuously pulls the mixture down into the blades to avoid ice chunks, so it blends like silk.
- To avoid damaging your blender, pour in the liquids and powders before the frozen fruit. Since I'm using peanuts, I've added them along with the milk and powders to achieve a better grind.
As you can see, I've also added the cocoa powder, sugar, cinnamon,vanilla essence, nutmeg, and salt (not in the pics).
4- Blend this first mix well.
5- With the help of a silicone pastry spoon, bring the little peanut chunks back into the mixture and add the frozen banana. Let the blender do its job until the blend looks creamy.
6- Serve your smoothies as soon as the blender is done.
7- Decorate.
I've used unsweetened dark chocolate chips and roasted peanuts.
I think it turned out really well. I like simple, edible, provocative decorations.
One of the jars has a sticker on it. It says, La vida empieza a los 40 ("Life begins at 40"). How do you like that? Personally, I think I need my glasses to lie to me like this every incoming decade 😂 It's silly motivational.
An hour after my super smoothie, I was ready to go biking around my sunny city.
It was 5:45 p.m. and I was full of energy.
All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY(https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker) for all them.
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @edwing357 ) sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
Thank you, thank you so much, @edwing357 @poshtoken ❤️
https://reddit.com/r/Cocina_Creativa/comments/1263swf/amazingdrinks_contest_my_super_vegan_smoothie/
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @edwing357 ) sharing the post on Reddit as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
Thank you so much, @edwing357 @redditposh ❤️
Thanks a lot, @amazingdrinks 🥤💚🌿
Hi @marlyncabrera !
This is a great recipe, an excellent participation, without a doubt a super smoothie that has many vitamins, minerals and proteins. With a glass of this smoothie we stay active and energized for a long time.
Excellent post, very good entry to the community contest, thanks for your participation!
Thank you so much for taking the time to welcome my entry. Much appreciated. And thank you so much for your great work, @amazingdrinks! 🥤💕
Chocolate, peanuts and bananas! It's a great thing on it's own, but with the added spices it takes it to a whole other level. I love the garnish.
You have the best bananas. We rarely get anything different from the usual ones. Those tophocos are so interesting to look at. Even in my travels I haven't seen such bananas.
Thanks for the recipe, I must try this with the spices. Yum!😋❤️
Have a great day!😊
I couldn't name all the varieties of bananas you can find here; also, they're really cheap. Topochos are a very distinctive kind; some say they're bananas, while some others say they're plantains. We make a distinction here, but if you ask a Spanish person, they'll say bananas are plantains. Crazy language.
I love bananas and cinnamon together. Nutmeg and cocoa together 😋
Thanks for your nice visit, my friend 💚
Saludos, @mayvileros y gracias por la invitación; ya voy allá 😁
Oh, muchas gracias por la invitación!
En casa he preparado un batido, con batata, cambur, maní, avena, yogurt y cacao... Así que puedo imaginar lo sabroso que queda tu receta porque es una combinación parecida.
Desconocía algunas de las propiedades que mencionas del maní, sin embargo es de mis frutos secos preferidos, por su sabor y por lo económico. Cada dos semanas compramos 1kg crudo en el mercado en 2$ aprox. y yo me encargo de tostarlos... 🤭
Hola, @morenaluna 🖤 Ese batido con batata es una bomba nuclear 😄 Siempre comprábamos el maní crudo en concha en el mercado municipal y lo tostábamos en casa; mi esposo lo lava en agua de sal y lo mete al horno extendido en una bandeja. Ése es su departamento 😄. Lo cierto es que hace meses que no lo hacemos desde que me regalaron un saquito de 3 kilos ya desconchado. Ya me queda poco, así que gracias por el dato del precio; ya me lo estaba preguntando. Somos fanáticos del maní.
Un abrazo y gracias por la visita. ¡Salud!
Thank you so much for the support, @creativecuisine 🥤💚
Excellent work, you have given us a craving hahahaha
Oh, that's so good! Your cravings are wise; this is a super smoothie! Thank you so much for dropping by 💕
Good content as always, we love that 💞
Me imagino lo delicioso y crujiente que quedó este smoothie, amiga, además de nutritivo. Me encanta el maní salado o dulce, no importa, cuando me como uno quiero terminar con todos jajaja. Y ni te cuento del cambur... bueno, en mi post les cuento que no faltan en mi casa. Me gustó la presentación que hiciste, se ve espectacular y, como siempre, el paso a paso muy bien explicado. Seguro voy a preparar este en casa para disfrutármelo con bastante maní. Saludos, un abrazo Marlyn.
Hola @aurodivys querida. Aquí somos locos por el maní. Justo vengo de tu post; ya me desintoxiqué y exorcicé todos los malos espíritus alimentarios 😂🤣 Me encantó tu smoothie saludable. Gracias por tu linda visita. ¡Salud! 🥤💚🌿
@marlyncabrera, qué delicia de batido con todos los ingredientes que me gustan: cacao, maní tostado, topocho, leche de coco casera, almendras y demás😄...
Querida mía, tengo la boca hecha agua con tu deliciosa receta. Un abrazo🌸.
Este smoothie es bueno para poetas porque también energiza la mente, sobre todo esa parte que versa 😆 Gracias por tu linda visita, @oacevedo. Quedo pendiente con ese smoothie; te encantará 💚🌿
Jejeje, eres lo máximo @marlyncabrera. Ojalá que pueda deleitar pronto tu smoothie.
Un abrazo, bella.