Recipe: "Winter Is Coming" Pear Smoothie

Winter Is Coming...

Literally. It's almost December. How does time pass so quickly?

Time however, did not pass quickly this morning, and so I found myself wandering about after a light workout wondering what I could pass off as a healthy interlude between breakfast and lunch. I didn't have milk or soy milk for a smoothie, and water with those sounds pretty gross. However, I did have coconut milk in the pantry and then had a genius idea to use up some of the fruit I had left from last weekend's market run.

Turns out, it was a shame to waste one of the most delicious pears I've ever had in a smoothie, but it was still delightful in this creamy and spicy snack. 

Pear Smoothie

Ingredients

• 1 ripe pear, peeled and cut into small chunks
• 1 ripe banana, chunked
• 5-6 tbsp coconut milk (or however much to make it your preferred consistency)
• small dash of nutmeg and cloves
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
• handful of ice cubes

Instructions

No more simple than this: put it all into a blender, pour into a glass, top with another little dash of nutmeg and cloves, and drink up! A perfect sweet and spicy blend to welcome in the winter! 

Product Review: Siggi's Skyr Yogurt

My failure at Paleo is breakfast. 

I can't help it. There is nothing appetizing about dinner for breakfast. Breakfast for dinner? Sign me up. Breakfast should be that glorious meal that immediately transports you to a sunshine-filled kitchen filled with the scents of bacon, the noise of the griddle sizzling, and the encompassing warmth of love...Okay, so I might be a little ridiculous, but I need breakfast to stay breakfast. And that means keeping yogurt in my diet.

I stumbled upon Siggi's when I was looking around for a yogurt that didn't have a lot of sugar, used milk from cows that weren't fed growth hormones, and that still tasted delicious. 

It's different, I'll grant you. It has the consistency of sour cream and some of the bitterness of Greek Yogurt, but it's exceptionally smooth and has just the right amount of flavor to make it delicious without having to add any additional sweeteners. 

My favorite flavor? Orange & Ginger. I find it to not be so mild of a flavor that I'm left wondering what it was supposed to be, though the 2% Coconut is (according to the boyfriend) vastly superior.

So what is Skyr, you ask? 

Skyr "is the traditional yogurt of Iceland. It is made by incubating skim milk with live active cultures. The whey, the water naturally found in milk, is strained away to make for a much thicker, creamier, concentrated yogurt. So to make just one cup of skyr, with all that water going out, you need 3-4 times the amount of milk required to make a regular cup of yogurt. As a result of this process skyr comes out with 2-3 times the protein count of standard yogurt" (www.skyr.com)

Siggi's has 2 different types of Skyr; one has 0% milkfat, and the other has a bit of cream thrown back into the mix at 2%. I find the Siggis's with 0% are more easily found, and have better flavors, but that's just me.

Some Nutritional Facts

• Gluten Free
• Milk from Grass Fed Cows
• No Aspartame
• No Sucralose
• No Gelatin
• No artificial Colorings
• No preservatives
• No High Fructose Corn Syrup
• No rBGH 

Quick Note on Paleo/Primal on Yogurt

Dairy consumption, especially the fermented stuff, is pretty much in a "gray area". If you're sensitive to dairy, don't eat it. But the current arguments that it has casein as the primary source of protein (so does human milk so that one's debatable) I basically just disregard. The fact that yogurt is fermented also means that the lactose gets broken down, which cuts down on true sugar and carb content.

Two great articles to read on the subject are:

The Health Benefits of Fermented Food

and

The Definitive Guide to Dairy 

Thanks for Reading!

CJ