Just a really good smoothie recipe
Smoothies are a silly food, except for this one, which rules.
Sarah and I made an episode of about the election (basically I told Griffin that it’s just like Star Wars — sometimes the emperor is in charge and you just have to join the resistance) so if you’re looking for stuff about that whole thing, please tune in there. This post, however, is about smoothies — specifically a chocolate smoothie that our family lives on.
When I need to take it easy on myself for any reason whatsoever (let’s just say, theoretically, for depressing political reasons) I make the kids chocolate smoothies for dinner. I usually serve some other snacky scraps (cheese, strawberries, whatever) but this smoothie is the main event and it rules and it definitely counts in my mind as a balanced, complete meal that tastes sort of like a fudgesicle. I fully stole this recipe from a place in Portland that doesn’t exist anymore (RIP Sip) that we lived close to when Griffin was a baby. I was nursing all the time so I was starving all the time and only ever had one hand free (max) with which to feed myself. Thus, one of the many changes matrescence enacted upon me was that I became a Smoothie Person. I lived on this particular one for months and it remains an anchor food in our household of specific eaters to this day. These chocolate smoothies cost like $10 at Sip and I did not care one bit for a long time — it’s possible I even reveled in my one daily extravagance in a 24/7 time of intensive caregiving. And then, one day (after I’d had a good nights’ sleep maybe), I realized that a $10-a-day smoothie habit was not sustainable for a person who was (at the time) basically unemployed. So I figured out how to make it myself.
Chocolate Smoothie
Frozen bananas
Oat milk (I started out using hemp milk, because Sip used hemp, but now full-fat, plain oat milk is a thing we love, so that’s what we use)
Creamy peanut butter (the kind that is only made of peanuts and salt — no sugar, no palm oil etc. and buy a store brand not the grind-it-yourself stuff lest your sensorially sensitive child detects ‘chunks’)
Cocoa powder
I use a 3-cup liquid measure thing that came with my immersion blender to make this smoothie — if you don’t have a thing like that you can just use a blender, or a large mason jar or even a bowl that’s deep and not too shallow and eyeball it.
To make the chocolate smoothie: Take your vessel of choice and fill it nearly full of frozen banana pieces. Dollop 3-4 giant tablespoons of peanut butter in there. If it’s not very salty PB, add a pinch of salt. Add 2-3 tablespoons of cocoa powder (I don’t stress about the minimal caffeine in cocoa powder and it doesn’t seem to impact bedtime.) Pour in oat milk until the bananas are totally covered. Purée until it looks like soft serve.
I usually serve it to the kids in these reusable silicone pouch thingys, but they’re a pain to clean I don’t even know if I recommend doing that. A cup and a straw works, too. Or even a spoon.
May the chocolate smoothie be with you, as it is with me, in these trying times, when lo, still, the kids demand to be fed.
Reading, writing, thinking:
For Portland Monthly, I had the absolute joy of writing about Portland’s mom group vibe shift towards centering the care of the mother as much as care of the baby. Read it here! There is so much generous, radical , thoughtful re-villaging happening in our city’s mother and parent communities! Thank goodness for our communities, they are everything.
Still listening to the BBC Witch podcast, slowly savoring it’s whole deal
Still finishing All Fours
Saw Anora! Really enjoyed it.
Still watching British Bake Off, still loving Nelly so much and not just because her name is my daughters name.
