Goldilocks Smoothie

I'd been craving something all morning, and couldn't put my finger on it. I'd already had a piece of toast, some fruit, and plenty of water. I wanted something a bit more substantial, but not too filling, but not skimpy, like a glass of juice. The smoothies at Chow are delicious and filling but a little sweet for my liking (I prefer salty to sweet anyway). They don't add any sugar at all ever for any reason, but they certainly use a bit of fruit, and those bananas and berries can get sweet real quick like. I wanted something a lot more muted, but that would still be filling.

I thought of those mainstream smoothies from Odwalla. You know the type. They have oats and almonds and soy milk and bananas, and a bit of sugar and some other added vitamins and the rest. It's delicious, but also a bit on the sweet side for my liking. OK, it's a lot on the sweet side. Either way, that's what I was craving.

Fortunately, we've got one of those monster blenders at Chow, so a smoothie is fairly easy to crank out. In went some ice, a piece or two of frozen banana, a fairly large handful of almonds, a good hefty handful of oats, and finally a tiny splash of soy milk to get the whole mess going quickly. Off the blender went, chomping down all the ingredients into a smooth, creamy beverage. I didn't want it to be thick and ice-creamy like the Sacred Chow smoothies (seriously; you have to eat it with a spoon at first!), but rather a little more liquidy, so I could chug that thing down, and get on with my work.

For some reason, the oats got ground down to this neat consistency that was very much like using those store bought soy milks where they add the emulsifiers and the like. I didn't cook the oats, I just ground them up raw. The almonds were toasted, but I'd imagine it'd work just as well with soaked or raw almonds. The bananas were there to keep everything suspended. I feel like this would have been equally delicious with rice milk, almond milk, hemp milk, or even water! The almonds and the oats make their own kind of milk when you're grinding it up, and they just need some sort of liquid to be suspended in.

It's delicious.

Cliff said it reminded him of the porridge from Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Goldilocks Shake.

Mmm.

Audio of Dino explaining the whole smoothie thing.

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