What’s Shakin’?

“Ya put your good stuff in, ya keep the bad stuff out, ya put more good stuff in and you shake it all about!”

Lots of people LOVE shakes.  For many folks, shakes are the way to get a quick and easy meal while on to go or at work. Most start with some ice,  fruit, orange juice and a couple scoops of protein powder, or fruit, yoghurt and juice. But wait!  We’re eating food the Paleo way now, so what can we do to make a good shake that follows the Paleo rules?

First, we ditch the juices, the yoghurts, and the protein powders. We might even ditch the fruit if we’re limiting fruit intake to support weight loss. Umm… that doesn’t leave much, does it?

So let’s break down the components of a shake.

1. We like it creamy. We’re not doing dairy, but we have coconut milk or almond milk, or even almond butter. We have to be careful to read labels though, as some varieties of these are sweetened, and we don’t want that!

2. We like flavor. Let your imagination run wild! Any combination of fruit will do, but that’s not the only choice. One of my favorite shakes is green, made with handfuls of whatever greens I could snitch from my rabbit (chard, dandelion, parsley, kale etc). There’s a “Green Shake” recipe at the end of this post that combines greens and fruit. I will even go as far as to  mention that sweet potatoes in shakes are tummy, as are avocados.

3. We may like it cold. This one is pretty easy – either add ice, or frozen fruit, or frozen coconut slices. Here’s where I can say that sometimes, warm is yummy too! I have been known to take leftover veggies and toss them in a blender with some coconut milk to make a veggie shake (aka cream of veggie soup!) to take along.

4. We often want it to have protein. Now, if you’re not eating STRICTLY Paleo, then you probably don’t mind using a protein powder. Even so, I’d suggest choosing your powder carefully. Most are made from Whey, which will introduce Dairy into your system again; it is also possible to find whey-based protein powders that are produced from grass-fed cattle, which would be a better option, although it can be expensive (Source Naturals and Defense Nutrition are two of many; I can’t recommend any as I don’t use them.)  Some are soy-based (but there we are eating legumes again). A few are egg-white based, which is a better option. My preference and recommendation though, is to invest in liquid egg whites from EggWhites International; extremely digestible and high in “bio-availability”, completely safe to eat in liquid form (no salmonella etc). NOTE: these are NOT raw eggs!

Mark’s Daily Apple has 5 yummy Paleo shake recipes here.

Here’s my rather weird-looking but really good Green Shake:

Ingredients

3-4 Cups greens, torn into small pieces
2 peeled & cored apples, or 1 apple and 1 pear
6 pumps Liquid EggWhites or 6 Tbs EggWhite powder (add 1/4 extra water)
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 cup filtered water
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1 cup of ice if you like it cold (reduce water to 1/2 cup)

If you have a favorite Shake recipe, please post it! And if you have other ideas about combinations of things, such as this Banana Avocado & Coconut Milk Shake from PaleoPals, let’s hear it!

Shakin’ thing up around here

Cynthia

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