The Smoothies Bible: A Book Review

Its summer time and the smoothies are delicious. Now don’t get me wrong I enjoy a smoothie all year round, but right now the berries are overflowing in the stores. We bough both blueberries and strawberries in quantity so that we could freeze a bunch for those winter morning smoothies when there are no fresh berries anywhere to be found.

The basic ingredients of great smoothies are fruit, ice, juice, yogurt as I have Type 2 diabetes I don’t usually make a smoothies with juice, there is enough sugar in the fruit as a rule and while a little bit of sugar is okay, too much is definitely not, so no juice. Milk, soy milk or rice milk work very well and if you do not like dairy then soy yogurt is an alternative.

Other ingredients that may find their way into the smoothies, wheat germ, cinnamon, nutmeg, honey, just a bit, and sometimes almonds.

We generally have smoothes once a week all year round, but we inherited a bunch of fruit the other day that had been purchased for a function but never used. So for a very small fee we got all ready diced watermelon, cantaloupe, honey melons, grapes and more strawberries. I froze some as the fruit was getting a bit ripe, after all other than strawberries none of the items is grown anywhere near here; but they were ideal for smoothies. So I went to the pubic library looking for a book, they have a good recipe section, and I knew they had a display that featured books on smoothies.

Cruising the shelves I spotted The Smoothies Bible by Pat Crocker. Page 12 tells you how to integrate smoothies into your daily diet and offers some great tips, like keep your blender in sight and always have fresh, seasonal fruit on hand. Great starts towards making the perfect breakfast drink.

The first part of the book discusses diseases such as diabetes and a number of others and has a bit of information about appropriate foods for each one.

The second part of the book contains an extensive section of ingredients profiles, including how to use the ingredients in a smoothie, check out the Cajun Cocktail on page 207.

The last part of the book has recipes, smoothie recipes and I found the perfect one for my melons, Mega Melon Supreme on page 178. It was delicious.

If you love smoothies you need to buy this book or, at least, borrow this book from the public library and try a few recipes.