Green Smoothies

So the girls at the gym got me started on these green smoothies for breakfast.  I know the idea of a green smoothie for something other than St. Patrick's Day is a little weird, but hear me out.  They are actually really good (the hubby even asked for one) and you knock out a couple servings of fruits and veggies, some dairy and get in a good amount of protein.  Plus it's great for being on the go! 
There's a ton of recipes on the internet, but here's the one that came up with.  You don't have to use the frozen fruit or protein powder, but I think it gives it a nice frothy texure.  Just make sure you check your teeth before any big meetings, sometimes the spinch can get caught in your teeth.

Ingredients

1 container greek yogurt with honey

1/2 scoop of vanilla protein powder

1/2 cup frozen mango chunks

2 clementines, peeled and seeds removed

1 cup fresh spinach

Directions

Put everything in a blender and blend until smooth.

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 1
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 313.9

• Total Fat: 0.6 g
• Cholesterol: 25.0 mg
• Sodium: 145.7 mg
• Total Carbs: 59.1 g
• Dietary Fiber: 5.2 g
• Protein: 21.9 g
  

Sinless Raspberry Triffle

I had a great time with my friends today at my Pampered Chef party.  Not many people showed up, but it did give me a chance to try out a bunch of new recipes.  And like nearly every party I have, there was a triffle.  I tried to make this one as low calorie as possible because some of the people who were supposed to come are on diets. 

The bottom is a layer of angel food cake, just baked in a 9"x13" cake pan and cut into bite size pieces.  The best thing to do is make the cake up a day or two beforehand.  I discovered with the last one I made that using warm cake pieces doesn't work too well.  It still tasted good, but it wound up sinking in as the cake cooled.

The next layer is cool whip with a big box of sugar free raspberry jello mix stirred in. I used extra creamy because that's what I had in the house, but the sugar free version would cut out a few more calories.  Word of advice, don't mix it up the night before, it gets kind of putty-like.  I was concerned that it wasn't going to be sweet enough, but it turned out tasting like cotton candy. 

The layer after that is sugar free cheesecake flavored jello made with 2% milk.  I don't like skim milk and it doesn't always work so well for cooking, so I don't normally have it in the house.  Usually I have 1%, but the commissary was out of it (oh, the joys of living overseas sometimes :-P ). 

That gets topped off with some raspberries.  You could use fresh ones, but this time of year they are usually crazy expensive.  So instead I thawed out two bags of frozen ones and let them sit in a strainer while I got all the rest of the ingredients together.  Next time I might use three bags, but it wasn't bad with two.

Then just repeat the layers one more time and top with a couple of pieces of the angel food cake.  I usually wind up with a good amount of cake left over, so this is a good use for them.  The leftover pieces are also great if you have any kids over.

After you add each layer (except for the cake), you might want to clean up the edges with a paper towel to keep the layers looking pretty.  It's just for looks, but it is a nice touch.

I really like making triffles for parties because you can use just about any combination of ingredients to make them fit a theme or season.  Plus if you tweak just a few things you can make them fit into any diet.  And because they turn out looking very pretty, everyone thinks you spent a ton of time on them when in reality it only takes about ten minutes to assemble them.

Chunky Mango Guac

I have a Wine and Dessert Pampered Chef party coming up, so I've been on the look out for delicious but easy (and healthy would be a nice bonus) recipes.  Of course we'll be making the brownie I posted before (gotta have chocolate you know) and I think that we are going to do some chopped fruit and different fruit dips.  Another thing that I think is going to work well is my Chunky Mango Guac.  The mangos add a slightly sweet twist on your regular guacamole.  Normally I leave salt out of recipes, but this is one that actually kind of needs it.  You can also add some chopped cilantro to it if you would like.

Ingredients

2 Avocadas, peeled and diced

1 Mango, peeled and diced

15 - 18 Cherry Tomatoes, diced

1/4 cup Lime Juice

2 tbsp Lemon juice

1 tbsp Garlic powder

1 tbsp Salt

Directions

Peel and dice the avocadas and mango, dice the tomatoes. You can add some onion if you would like, dried or fresh onions work well. Mixx all the ingredients together and let sit for a few minutes to blend the flavors.

Serving Size: Makes a big bowl

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 8
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 148.7

• Total Fat: 11.0 g
• Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
• Sodium: 879.4 mg
• Total Carbs: 13.6 g
• Dietary Fiber: 6.0 g
• Protein: 2.2 g