Smoothies provide easy nourishment that keeps you cool

You can’t ignore the sweltering temperatures we are enduring lately around the Mid-South. When the heat index climbs well into the triple digits, cooking, preparing or eating hot foods isn’t appealing at all. We just want something to help us cool down, including the foods and beverages we eat.

Smoothies are perfect for this. There is little preparation, no cooking, and the whole business of making it is done in minutes. Then all you need is a comfortable seat, or, even better, a pool, to enjoy your refreshing and nourishing drink.

I am always inspired, and sometimes intimidated, by smoothie recipes. What tends to happen with me is that I read through recipes and make mental notes about the ones I want to try. Then I forget about them until I am at the grocery store, where I try to remember all the ingredients called for in these recipes. Invariably, I can only remember some of these, or I get ingredients from several smoothie recipes mixed up. When I get home, I often find I am missing one or more of the items called for in a particular recipe.

That scenario happened to me this time too. Inspired by the recipe booklet that came with my new Ninja blender, I got to the grocery store without a written list of what I needed to make one of the recipes contained therein. I remembered something about apple juice and spinach, and then saw pear juice right there near the apple juice, which made me think of ginger, so I added those things to my cart as well. Remembering some of the frozen fruit I had in my freezer, which I intended to use, I figured I was set.

At home, I discovered I had forgotten the kiwi called for in one recipe, and found that the frozen pineapple I meant to use from my freezer was suffering badly from freezer burn, so that got tossed out. So I took stock of what I had on hand and put it together. I think it came out great. The lesson here is that smoothie recipes, like most recipes, are suggestions on how to combine ingredients to make something yummy, but most of the time there is room for your own interpretation, or your preferred substitutions.

I love the combination of pear and ginger, and that works well in this recipe too. I feel like ginger is more of an adult taste, so if you are making this for your children, you might use a smaller piece of ginger and see what they think. I only used half of a mango, because I had one that had a lot of brown spots that needed cutting away. Otherwise, I would have thrown the whole thing in there. I used to buy the bigger, reddish mangoes, but I’ve recently become a convert of the smaller yellow ones. I think they are more reliable in their sweetness, and that big seed in the middle seems flatter and easier to maneuver around. And if you don’t have pear juice, use apple juice instead. I like the unfiltered juices for smoothies, because they add a bit of texture, but if you have the clearer variety of juice, that should work fine as well.

In addition to keeping cool by drinking this mixture, you can feel a little virtuous because it is low in calories and sodium, has no fat, and just one cup gives you one-third of the vitamin C and vitamin A you need in an entire day. Even if you drink the entire thing, which I did, for breakfast one morning, the calorie damage is minimal. Some commercially made smoothies can have three or four times the amount of calories in this one.

Note that there is no added sugar in this combination. The pear juice and the ripe mango are quite sweet with their natural sugars and seem to be enough. However, if you wanted to add a bit of honey or agave syrup, or even a sweetener, feel free to do so.

This smoothie does not have the same texture as one you might buy at a commercial smoothie place. If you want it thicker, try adding more ice, or perhaps a dollop or two of Greek yogurt.

The unbearable heat won’t last forever, but while it does, a chilly concoction like today’s smoothie can help make it a little more tolerable.