Smoothie recipes for a healthy start

Smoothie recipes are my favourite. I can have healthy smoothies for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Most of the time I am a major foodie and am obsessed with healthy tasty food. But there are somedays when normal daily life seem to be too cumbersome. As a result of this simple tasks like the three daily meals of the day seem to be very extra.

In those days I dream of a magic meal replacement tablet. Just have one tablet and you are good to go for the entire day without any headaches of meal preparation, dinner ideas and so on. Alas that dream is not going to come true any time soon for us commoners.

So I have discovered the next best things for those days when I am not out and about with my measuring cups and yeast jar and ready to bake a bread! That life saver favourite of mine is a smoothie.

Smoothies are especially helpful for my weekday breakfasts for which I am usually the most unprepared. I am not much of a morning person. Okay okay!  I am definitely not a morning person and the early hours have never been my best friend. This is one challenge that I have failed over and over again.

You have to believe me that I have made multiple plans of early morning yoga sessions, followed by pottering around in my tiny balcony garden and surprising hubby dearest with a fresh batch of honey drizzled pancakes.

But these plans are as of yet hypothetical. Most workday mornings are like a whirlwind and my sweetest friend(a.ka hubby) helps out by getting the breakfast ready as I jab at my eye with a mascara wand to make myself look presentable!

The cure to this daily morning madness is the magical healthy smoothie recipes. All that is needed to be done is chuck in all the healthy ingredients (that we have decided for on that particular day) into the blender. Give it a blitz for  2 to 3 minutes and tada! Your healthy, nutritious and filling breakfast is ready which you don’t even have to chew on. How much better can things get?

I have many favourite healthy smoothie recipes out of which I will share the vegan papaya smoothie recipe today. This can be a breakfast/dinner smoothie as per your liking.

This smoothie has only 6 ingredients and is super duper easy to make. This recipe is even more special because I tried to make homemade almond milk for the first time while making it. You can find the recipe for almond milk here.

Almonds: The ‘nut’ i am Crazy about!

I have used papayas here as they are a wonderful tropical fruit that has tremendous health benefits, is loaded with antioxidants, can reduce inflammation, increase immunity and also keep you looking young. What else do you need from a fruit?  

If you absolutely don’t like papayas you can use non citrus fruits like bananas, apples, muskmelon etc. The almond milk can be replaced by skimmed low fat milk but then it is no longer a vegan smoothie. Chickpea flour is a great source of plant protein and gives this smoothie a wonderful nutty flavour. Walnuts, chia seeds all fall in the superfood category as well.

Ingredients:

1. Papaya Ripe (1/2 cup dices)
2. Almond Milk 1 ½ cup (preferably homemade)
3. Chia seeds (1 tsp soaked in 3 tbsp of water for 15 to 20 minutes)
4. Walnuts ( 3 to 4)
5. Jaggery/ Honey( as per your taste i.e how much sweetness you want)
6. Chickpea Flour/ Sattu (1 ½ tbsp)

Method:

The first step is to get all your ingredients in one place.

Then take all the ingredients in a blender jar and blitz at low speed for 2 minutes and at medium speed for a minute or so.  If you see that your smoothie is too thick you can add some more almond milk to bring to your desired consistency.

Enjoy your vegan papaya walnut chia seed smoothie which is as tasty as it is healthy. It will keep your tummy happy till lunch time I guarantee you and prevent you from snacking on any unhealthy fried stuff during tea breaks at office.