Building The Perfect Smoothie

Remember when I shared with you that I was starting to make smoothies? I promised some recipes once I perfected them and those are coming. Before I share some of my favorite concoctions I thought I'd pass along a few tips I've learned.

Above is a visual "formula" for my smoothies. I've detailed each "layer" below. Basically, I mix and match what I have (or what is in season)to come up with the daily smoothie. I love this method because I can customize it by making it low-oxalate (which I've been trying to follow recently due to some recurring GI/pain issues).

Fresh Peach Crisp

I’m not a huge fan of peaches unless they are at their peak seasonally, which is now. Over the weekend the grocery store had locally grown peaches for only 49 cents a pound! I probably bought too many of them. I liked the peach blueberry crumbles I made awhile ago, but wanted to try to make a peach crisp. I found a Cook’s Illustrated recipe that sounded good. These were so delicious, I’m going to make them again this week. I do wish the filling was a bit juicier; maybe mine wasn’t because the original recipe calls for frozen peaches,which when thawed would produce more liquid. But why use frozen peaches when fresh ones are in season? I bet if I omitted the cornstarch I would get more of a bubbly filling using fresh peaches.

Peach Blueberry Crumbles

This week I had peaches to use up along with some blueberries. I love Cook’s Illustrated berry crumbles, but I thought I’d try a new recipe. A quick search on Food Network produced this highly rated Ina Garten recipe. The recipes are pretty similar, a few minor differences, one being more sugar in Ina's topping.

I have a soft skin peeler that I used to peel my peaches. It has a serrated blade that does an excellent job peeling fruit with soft skins, like peaches and tomatoes. I think it would be fine, if you don't want to peel the peach, to just dice up the peaches. I also have this multi grain cereal that I added to the topping to get some whole grains.