All-Fruit Smoothie

My typical breakfast vacillates based on my morning schedule. When I had time in the mornings (as in school) it was Eggo waffles more or less every morning (why it's still one of my favorite food). Lacking time in the morning (such as now, with work) I seek out something quick that I can easily eat while I drive. Also for a time I didn't have a toaster handy, so I never got in any bagel habit.

For a while I had the Pancake & Sausage on a stick that Jon Stewart likes to make fun of, until they suddenly disappeared from store shelves (I actually kind of blame Jon for that). Needing a replacement, it became pop-tarts... cold.

Then I saw an episode of Good Eats where Alton made smoothies and thought, 1) that looks hella good, 2) that looks hella easy, and 3) I probably should have some like, fruit, in my diet anyway. So, a new blender, some frozen fruit and some juice, and a portable tumbler with a proper straw later - I had a tasty new breakfast.
Maybe the best part about the smoothie is that its not going to be the same thing every day. You can use different juices, you can use different fruits. The only constant in the ones I made is the addition of a banana (helps thicken things, adds a neutral flavor, has potassium and shit - and is waaaay cheaper than any of the other fruit ingredients).

For the blender you want multiple speeds, a square shaped container (circular ones let the fruit just spin around inside), and I find plastic is easier to handle than glass (it also won't shatter if you drop it). It turns out, looking around at Target, that this made the cheapest blender available the best for the job (a $20 Oster) - so there's a gift horse.

For the ingredients, start with your juice - I've used cranberry and grape myself, Alton used 'Acai Berry' which I have never actually seen in a store. For the bananas, just get fresh ones, and peel and freeze them yourself (if your store has discounted already ripe bananas, get those - you're freezing them anyway). For the fruit, just get bags of fresh frozen fruit (avoid the sugar added ones, I guess) - I've done strawberries, mixed fruit (pineapple and some other stuff), mixed berries (raspberry, blackberry etc.), raspberries, blackberries, peaches, cherries, and tropical fruit (various melon).

From there I actually like to portion the 16 ounce bags of fruit into 4 sandwich bags of 4 ounces a piece - when assembling a smoothie I just grab 2 bags to get my 8 ounces of fruit. This is totally skippable, I just like being anal retentive about this stuff.

So we have our stuff - now what. The assemblage happens in the evening - I tare my blender container on my scale, then add a frozen bananna and 2 4 ounce bags worth of fruit. After adding that stuff your scale will show about 11-13 ounces. Since my cup is 16 ounces, and I don't want to drink a paste in the morning, I add juice until I hit 17-18 ounces (you want to be a little over the 16 ounce capacity of the cup because fruit is a bit denser than water).

Ready to blend? No, the fruit is all frozen hard as a rock man. Now's the time to seal up the container and to let it thaw in the fridge overnight.

Here's where its awesome - in the morning put the container on the blender and start blending. Start on the lowest setting and move to medium (I'm working on the 'low' toggle of my blender the whole time here - when I say 'high' later, I mean the high end of the low section). Leave it there until all the large pieces of fruit have disappeared (and you just have a thick kind of consistancy). Also keep an eye that you have a good vortex going - if the blender sucks in air it will kill the movement. You'll know it took in air when the top is smooth and not a vortex - turn the blender off until it 'burps', then work it back up to medium.

Work it to 'high', then let it go for a good 30-60 seconds. Finally, turn it off, and pour. The thickness of the smoothie is going to depend heavily on the heaviness of the fruit -- I find peaches and berries to be thicker than melons and cherries, for example. Longer blending helps break things down as well. And at the end, for 5 minutes of work (mostly the nigh before), you have this awesome portable breakfast.

Time: 5 Minutes
Difficulty: 1/5
Cleanup: 1/5
Taste: 4/5