I find myself gravitating toward lighter foods that require minimal heat-generating cooking as the mercury inches up. This green piña colada smoothie came about one day when my husband arrived home earlier than usual with the boys, who were hot, tired, and hungry from spending the afternoon outdoors. I was preoccupied working on an earlier blog post and hadn’t prepared anything for dinner. Not that early, anyway.
What to do? It was too hot to cook for any longer than 15 minutes, and I had two three hungry boys to feed. Okay. Emergency pizza mode. Fished out a gluten-free pizza from the freezer reserved for the boys on days like this. Ten minutes of baking time? I can stand that. The boys could as well. Chorused the kids: “Pizza? Yayyyy! Pizza Boy!” Sprinkled some gremolata all over it since I had some on hand (I can’t bear seeing it all plain without a spot of green!) and set about making a green smoothie to up our vegetable intake. Next time I’m going to make batch make frozen pizzas using this awesome looking pizza crust recipe but will need to figure out the egg replacement for my egg-allergic younger son.
I’ve been using plain bone broth to replace water in smoothies and other beverages like my Fortified Hot Carob and this one was no different. I make my bone broths very plain, with a bay leaf or two and a splash of apple cider vinegar. Usually with beef bones, or a mixture of beef and chicken or pork. No aromatics like garlic or onions. This way I can incorporate gut-soothing bone broth in sweet or savoury applications.
So I placed everything in the food processor and whizzed it up. Result: thick, creamy, piña colada-y green smoothie. Not too icy cold to give one a brain freeze, but not too warm(?!) to make one feel like they’re drinking soup! Just nice and chilled. There, dinner is served. Not perfect, but problem solved. My eldest son gulped it down, exclaimed ‘yum!’, before tackling his slice of pizza. The youngest one munched on his pizza while taking sips of smoothie from time to time. The husband had a second helping of the green piña colada smoothie (and he doesn’t even like sweet stuff these days) to accompany his pizza. I “chewed” my smoothie and had no pizza. I don’t mind at all. The best pizza I had ever eaten was on our wedding day (we celebrated at an Italian restaurant) and nothing else would ever beat that, not even pizza in Naples (call me very biased). Besides, I wasn’t too hungry from recipe testing earlier in the day.
AIP smoothies shouldn’t be too sweet, and this green piña colada smoothie fulfills that criteria. Depending on the greens you use, you could end up with a slightly herbal and savoury undertone. I used a blend of arugula (rocket) and baby kale, I’m thinking baby spinach would be a nice alternative as well. My first memory of piña colada (the actual cocktail) was when I was in my early twenties and I remembered being wowed by the pineapple and coconut combination, and not so wowed by the alcohol taste ;). Given the opportunity I’d pick a non-alcoholic drink over an alcoholic one anytime!
There’s still tiny flecks of greens in the smoothie that just couldn’t be blitzed up by the food processor. I’m still dreaming of the day I can get my hands on a Vitamix or Blendtec blender (I had a bad experience with the Ninja blender as a piece of plastic at the base chipped off after blending frozen bananas). When I was working at a restaurant we used Blendtecs and I just loved how efficient they were and how they made such perfectly homogeneous smoothies. Except for raspberry smoothies. We used fresh raspberries and had to strain the smoothies with a chinois (a conical fine sieve) and it was hard work.
Speaking of frozen bananas, I get bunches of organic and Fair trade bananas when they start getting overripe and sold off really cheap for quick sale. Peel and cut them, par-freeze on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, before storing the whole bunch in a resealable freezer bag in the freezer. Makes it easy and convenient to make a last minute ‘ice cream’ or smoothie, like in today’s green piña colada smoothie.
Where to get certain ingredients online (affiliate links):
- 2 frozen bananas, cut into chunks
- 2 cups pineapple chunks (or ½ a cored pineapple)
- Flesh of 1 large avocado
- 3 cups baby greens (I used baby arugula and kale, baby spinach is another alternative)
- 1¼ plain and cold bone broth, strained
- ¾ cup coconut water (or more bone broth or filtered water)
- ¾ cup coconut milk
- Place all ingredients in a blender/ food processor, cover, and blend until smooth.
You can certainly use unfrozen bananas instead, just that the smoothie will not be very cold. Or try frozen pineapple chunks instead of fresh.
