Magic on Main Street Smoothies!

Everyone loved the blog post with Greyson's Hot Chocolate Recipe from the Pack of Dawn and Destiny series, so I wanted to do something similar for smoothies since those are Jade's beverage of choice in the Magic on Main street series.

I don't have a specific recipe to share but instead I'm going to share some of my top tips with you! If you weren't aware, I've had a lot of teeth procedures from 2021-2024 and all of them required me to go on a liquid/very soft foods only diet afterwards. Because of this I explored a lot of different smoothie options and the smoothies Jade makes in the Magic on Main Street series are based on my own personal testing. (It's also why Jade has a lot of veggie/fruit smoothies instead of dessert smoothies. I ate copious amounts of ice cream and popsicles during my liquid diets, so for my smoothies I focused on trying to get fruits, veggies, and protein. I used a lot of yogurt and peanut butter.) Tip # 1: Make sure you have the right equipment. You need a really good blender if you are going to make smoothies - make sure your blender is capable of crushing ice even if you aren't going to use ice cubes (see next tip). I eventually upgraded to a Ninja Fit Blender which I don't love enough to say I'm a "super fan" but it does do a better job of crushing up the frozen stuff compared to the regular blender I was using before. A wooden spoon with a long handle is also great if you need to dig around in the blender (the spinach is the biggest culprit of this). Tip # 2: Use frozen cucumbers or carrots instead of ice cubes. I don't like watery smoothies, so instead of using ice cubes I cut cucumbers into slices and put them side by side in a baggie (like cookie dough on a baking sheet) and froze them. The reason why you have to put them flat and side by side is so they don't stick together - otherwise you will end up with a giant blob of frozen cucumbers and you would need an industrial blender to break up. I used cucumbers as my based because they don't have a super strong flavor on their own. Special note: You can also freeze carrots and use them instead of cucumbers! To save time, buy shredded carrots and toss them in the freezer, but make sure you blend them well in the smoothie  as the first step, or you'll have gritty bits like Jade occasionally had. Neither cucumbers or carrots will give your smoothie a very strong flavor, which is why I usually chose to make a base with one of these two veggies. Though if you use a lot of these for your base, and a lot of spinach, it will feel like you're eating an iced salad, sooooo keep that in mind. Tip # 3: Use whatever other frozen ingredients you can instead of fresh ingredients. Similar to tip # 2, to avoid having to use ice I would use frozen fruit whenever possible instead of fresh fruit because it meant I didn't have to use ice, and most frozen items shatter so they pulverize better than fresh items (fresh items tend to mush). You don't have to buy them frozen either, I cut up so many bananas and froze them flat just like the cucumber slices so they would blend up well. Special note: The amount of fruit you use directly impacts how delicious your smoothie is! The more fruit you use, the sweeter and more delicious your smoothie will be! Tip # 4: Spinach doesn't change the flavor much but it will probably change the color to green (which turns an unappetizing gray when frozen).  I love spinach and I added a LOT of spinach to my smoothies but yeah, just a word of warning that combining spinach with most fruits is going to make your smoothie grey or brown-grey if you freeze it after making it, and even if you don't freeze it, it will turn bright green. This situation happens to Jade in the Magic on Main Street series since like me she was trying to pack spinach into her smoothies. Tip # 5: Frozen pineapple + sweetened condensed milk = a Dole Whip dupe! When I was sick of my veggie packed smoothies and I didn't want ice cream, I'd treat myself to a homemade version of the famous Disney Land/Disney World treat, a dole whip! The internet has hundreds of recipes that you can use for reference, but after a lot of experimenting I found the magic ingredients are FROZEN pineapple (it must be frozen!!) and sweetened condensed milk, so watch for recipes that contain those two specific ingredients!

Kitty's basic smoothie process:

1. Start with the frozen cucumbers or carrots and pulverize/blend--it becomes powdery, like veggie snow.

2. Add fruit as desired and blend (some ideas of what I've used: bananas, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and avocados (but not all at the same time!))

3. Add some milk so you can mix the ingredients--since I didn't ever use ice which waters the smoothie down, my smoothies would be THICK, which some blenders might not be able to handle, so you might need to add milk throughout the process.

4. Add spinach

5. Add other desired ingredients (examples: peanut butter, maple syrup/sugar, chocolate chips, or Greek yogurt)

6. Blend and add additional milk to make it less thick if needed.

7. If sad, make a Dole Whip Dupe. ;) There you go, Champions! This has been, "Kitty's Guide to Not Starve While on a Liquid Diet If You're Sick of Soup." If you have a smoothie recipe and you'd like to share it, post it in the comments down below! Until next week, thanks for reading!