Monday, February 14, 2011

New Tricks, Old Tricks....week 6 and cottage cheese smoothies


I love my cottage cheese smoothies so much I could probably live off of them...seriously! It may seem that I came up with the idea of using cottage cheese instead of yogurt after reading 4HB, but I started using cottage cheese instead of yogurt before I read 4HB, and this is how it actually happened. I always put a pinch of salt in my yogurt smoothies, so I thought, hey, if I use cottage cheese then I don't have to add salt....but I will have to add sugar! That's OK, because vanilla, or any other flavored yogurt has sugar added, this way I add my own sweetner, whatever I chose...maple syrup, honey, brown sugar, etc., I chose! Besides that, cottage cheese has way more protein.

I looked at my new smoothies as "cheesecake"! What kind of cheesecake flavors would I like? My first "recipe" I posted a while back using butternut squash and brown sugar, kinda like pumpkin cheese cake. This last week I started to use lemon and blueberries, and yesterday I needed to use some leftover coffee, so surprisingly I happen to have had a banana in my freezer...cafe' banana smoothie. (*see note about bananas)

I'm not done playing around with flavors, maybe chocolate, strawberry (in summer), I've even thought about a "guacamole" smoothie using avocado and tomato. But for now I don't want to play around with too much choice, instead chosing routine.
Speaking of routine....

week 6

I like the addition of coffee to my smoothie, as long as it's my first meal of the day, between 9:30-11:30am.

Cabbage salad....I love my cabbage salads, and it's easy to pre shred and lasts 5-7 days in the fridge! If I get to add raisins or grapes to my salad depends on whether or not I eat my "fruit allotment" somewhere else (I love raisins in my lentils!)

My meat protieins this week are lamb, chicken and canned tuna. I've been making alot of Indian inspired dal and I was missing lamb badly with those flavors. I bought some shoulder chops (bone in) to cook in the PC this morning along with some ground lamb for some kind of soup or chili. I was looking for more affordable cuts.

I always have my "live trail mix", almonds in the freezer, carrot, celery and broccoli sticks with pnb and raisins for snacks, or preportioned lentils or dal with rasins.

I bought a couple of apples, and lately I can't help but buy red grapes.

I may add 1 serving of oats as a small meal.

I think that's it. Do I need anything else? Nope....I have everything I need except maybe a few pieces of candy! Lucky me.



*note about bananas I have, for a long time, discouraged bananas as a "dieters" fruit of choice because of it's dense sugar content and because it's a startchy fruit, much like a potato is a startchy veg. It's a fruit easy to overeat and doesn't have the water and fiber of other fruits. I haven't purposely bought bananas in years! The only reason I had one in the freezer was beause my son, Gabe, bought some months ago and the last one sat on the counter turning brown. I was going to throw it out, but instead I peeled it and threw it in the freezer, where it's been sitting since.

When I was trying to think of something that would give my smoothie more "weight", I remembered this banana. So, yesterday Mark was at Girya while I was teaching classes and he asked me what I wanted form the store. I said, "Believe it or not I need a couple of bananas!". One of my students overheard me and she questioned me...."Bananas?". She knew by reading my blogposts that I don't advocate bananas.....so I wrote this as an explaination!

I still don't think anyone that has a habit of overeating should include bananas on their shopping list....but I don't fall into that category, lol!

6 comments:

Maribel said...

That smoothie looks awesome. Never thought of using cottage cheese in place of yogurt...must try it!

Tracy Reifkind said...

Maribel,

I love my smoothie meal so much I thought about buying a blender to have at the studio, as I find myself spending most of the day in PA a couple of days a week.

NO nonfat cottage cheese btw! lowfat or full fat only, lol

Maribel said...

Holy Smokes! Tried this today...delish!! I always have frozen bananas and other assorted fruits stashed because I make my kids smoothies pretty regularly. used one banana, 1/2 cup frozen blueberries, only half a1/2 cup of cottage cheese and 1TB of maple syrup. The kids approved too!

I make "green" smoothies for the kids... 1 cup of whatever frozen fruit I have, 1-2 cups water and blend well. Here is where the green comes in, grab a couple of hand fulls of fresh spinach and blend until smooth. I taste to see if it needs honey to sweeten, but most of the time it doesn't...just depends on the fruit. You might have to stop the blender and move it around a couple of times. Raw spinach is really mild, so it doesn't add very much flavor, but it does add a lot of nutrients.

Tracy Reifkind said...

Maribel,

Green smoothies have become so popular, but I get so many greens that I skip putting them in my smoothies. Great idea and method for getting your kids to eat more though! (green is such a nice color, lol)

I still want to try the avocado/tomato smoothie!

Bee said...

Tracy, you've got to try putting avocado in a smoothie, but I'm not sure about the tomato with it. The avocado makes it very nicely smooth (like a banana), but in my opinion gives it a much nicer flavor than banana. Works with fruit, chocolate, or just greens! I don't add a sweetner to my smoothies -- I like them on the "sour" or savory side.

I didn't think you did smoothies! I'm gonna' switch to cottage cheese next week. Oh, and yeah, you look great in the picture in the post before this -- can definitely see a leaner Tracy -- wow!

Tracy Reifkind said...

Bee,

OK, I knew the avocado was a good idea, and I like your suggestion of leaving it a bit "sour-savory", so I think I'm going to experiment with avo, corn, spinach and cottage cheese....maybe a bit of sugar, but not too much.

Thanks for the comment!