LifeSoup by Cherie Dawn Haas

For Christmas this year, my husband, Dwayne, bought me a Ninja blender set.

My feminist voice quieted about receiving kitchen items as gifts many years ago, when my father-in-law gave me a Pampered Chef pan that could bake four mini-loaves of bread at once. Since then, I’ve embraced the fact that I do love to cook and bake – even if I’m not great at it all the time – and gracefully accept such gifts. 🙂

I was thrilled with the Ninja set because since embarking on this vegan-curious journey, I’ve come across many recipes that call for a food processor. I’ve learned that sometimes a hand mixer will do the trick, and sometimes a blender will work, but not consistently across recipes.

This set includes a big blender, a smoothie blender, and a food processor. I’m stoked about that.

Christmas morning, I skipped the donuts we had bought for our sons and started throwing things into the smoothie blender. I quickly discovered that it wouldn’t hold all my ingredients – I was being ambitious.

I also quickly discovered that, indeed, the blades are SHARP.

I’ll spare you the details on that, but will tell you how sweet it was when Dwayne came running into the kitchen when I called to him, “Great news! The blades are SHARP!”

A common reminder that I give to our sons is that we live 30-45 minutes from the nearest hospital.

Back to the smoothie! If you’re new to making fruit and vegetable smoothies, it’s a good idea to follow a recipe at first to get the right amount of liquids and solids. Then you can experiment and adjust as you make more. Mine are different every time, but this one turned out great, with no added sweeteners.

Here’s my recent smoothie recipe:

Christmas Day Smoothie

8 oz. milk alternative (I like to use Silk, in the red container)
1 apple, with core removed
1 orange, peeled
1 big handful of fresh spinach
1 handful of frozen strawberries
1 frozen banana, cut into a few pieces
1 container of “So Delicious” vanilla yogurt (vegan & delicious!)
1-2 handfuls of ice

As mentioned above, I used a big blender for this. It made three decent-sized servings.

A note about the frozen banana…a while back I decided that instead of letting our bananas rot (because they often go from green to brown these days), I peel them and freeze them in sandwich baggies, to be used in smoothies. There! I just saved you like 48 cents a week probably!

I hope you enjoyed this Christmas Smoothie story and recipe. If you have a favorite smoothie recipe, tell me about it in the comments below!

Peace, love, and fire,
Cherie Dawn

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