Primal Fed

For a while now, we’ve been drinking our breakfast. To me, it’s just an easy way to get a lot of good nutrition into your body right as you wake up. It’s also a good way to use those less-than-perfect fruits and vegetables you have that just don’t seem palatable to eat by themselves. Once they’re all nicely blended in a smoothie, you won’t be able to tell that some of them were bruised or some of them were over-ripe.

The basis of my shakes starts with a banana. I frequently add vegetables to my shakes that some people might not enjoy the taste of in a shake. The banana does an excellent job of masking these flavors. Most of the time the finished product ends up tasting fruity with just a hint of banana. And that’s fine with me.

I say ‘Most of the time’ because I don’t really have a recipe to follow. I start with a banana, add some leafy vegetable(s), and then whatever fruit I have on hand that sounds good at the time. I could end up with something like this:

1 banana
1 C. fresh spinach
1/2 C. strawberries
1/2 C. blueberries
1/2 C. milk
1/2 C. ice

Spinach? Ew. Well, not really. If you tell most people you’re going to put spinach in a shake and drink it they look at you like you have six eyes. But once you add the banana, you can’t taste the spinach anymore but you still get all the great nutrition that’s in the spinach by eating it fresh and whole.

Here’s another one:

1 banana
1/2 C. fresh spinach
1/2 C. romaine lettuce
1 kiwi
1/2 C. cantaloupe
1/2 C. milk
1/2 C. ice

I’m a big fan of this method because I don’t need to look up recipes and it literally uses whatever fruits and vegetables I have in my fridge that morning. So far, I haven’t made a shake that I haven’t enjoyed using this method.

I suppose from a strict paleo sense, I would do without the cow’s milk. I’ve seen some who recommend a moderate intake of full-fat milk. I’m not sure how ‘paleo’ any dairy is, but at this point I am using what I have on hand and working toward a paleo lifestyle. I’m not there yet. I suppose in the future I will be replacing the milk with coconut milk. And that sounds delicious.