Vegetables. Seriously. Why? Why do they have to taste like you are eating a tree branch with leaves? Fruit and vegetables are supposed to make up FIFTY percent of your daily menu. That is A LOT of tree branches. The scariest question around here when we ask to go out for ice cream in the evening is, “What vegetable did you eat today.” Um… well… None! That is the truth of the matter! But we love going out for ice cream so we had to think of a way to change that answer. We have tried cooking vegetables. That did not work. We have tried eating them raw with different dips. Improvement, but not great. Soup is usually our best option, but not for every day. And then we thought, could we hide vegetables in a protein shake?
Experimenting with Vegetables
We knew our mom would be suspicious if we asked her to get a whole bunch of fresh vegetables in her next grocery shop. And we were right, as her response was something along the lines of, “You want me to spend a ton of money on greens that are going to rot in the refrigerator, make a soggy mess that no one will clean up but me, and then throw them away?” How about frozen?
3 Reasons for Frozen Vegetables In Shakes
- The best part of buying frozen vegetables for protein shakes was that if this experiment failed, we would just have a lot of vegetables in the freezer. Since somehow we clean our freezer about every 2 years compared to cleaning our refrigerator every week, we didn’t think we would get in trouble as much if we abandoned our plan.
- After doing some research, it turns out that there is not much nutritional value lost when freezing vegetables. And in some cases, you actually get a fresher end product because flash freezing them right away keeps them from sitting on trucks and shelves for days and days.
- Frozen vegetables add another bonus in the fact that you do not need to add ice to your shake.
Tricks for Blending the Vegetables
Our first couple of attempts were pretty successful. We threw all of our ingredients into the blender and hoped for the best. We were able to drink them without too much trouble. But we still felt that the vegetables were too noticeable and there were little chunks in the bottom of the glass that were not enjoyable. How could we get the vegetables to be invisible?
After brainstorming, we came up with the idea to blend all of the vegetables first with the milk into the tiniest bits we could before adding any other ingredients. We spent a long time with this first step, to the point that our blender started to smell a little bit like the motor was blending. That is when we stopped. This made a big difference in hiding the vegetable texture and taste in our protein shake.
Surprisingly, the other trick that we learned was using blueberries. We are not huge fans of this fruit on its own unless they are super fresh and perfectly ripe because they tend to be a bit sour. But frozen blueberries really sweetened the overall taste of our protein shake and helped to hide any sneaky vegetables from the taste.
Finally, we can answer Mom that we indeed, did have vegetables today! Now, let’s go get ice cream.
How to Hide Vegetables in a Protein Shake
You can tell your Mom that you had your vegetables for the day! And you will not even have to taste them!
Ingredients
- 1/4 Cup Frozen Cauliflower
- 1/4 Cup Frozen Kale
- 1/2 Cup Frozen Spinach
- 1 and 1/2 Cup Frozen Strawberries and Banana Mix
- 1/2 Cup Frozen Blueberries
- 1 and 1/2 Cups Milk
- 1 Scoop (About 4 Tablespoons) of Protein Powder (We used double chocolate)
Instructions
- Add frozen vegetables to blender. Pour in milk and blend until vegetables are extremely fine.
- Add frozen fruit and protein powder. Blend until desired thickness.
Notes
Make sure to blend your vegetables as much as possible to hide them!
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