3 Smoothie Mistakes Making them Unhealthy

 Smoothies and Smoothie Bowl are latest fad in diet and considered healthy. However there are some common mistakes you might be making that are making your smoothies unhealthy and infect causing weight gain.

1. Adding Ice or drinking smoothies cold:

All the smoothie videos I see,  add ice to the smoothie, or freeze the fruit and then blend them to make smoothies creamy. However do you know that this cold smoothies are dousing your digestive fire. 

Per Ayurveda (age old and time tested Indian health science) digestive fire is the building block that helps you digest food properly and help body absorb nutrition properly. 

When your smoothies are ice cold, they are choking this digestive fire and hence it is not getting digested. Which causes inflammation and in-turn gut related disease. 

2. Mixing Yogurt/Milk or other improper combination in fruit based smoothies:

Fruits are supposed to be eaten with fruits since they take lowest time to digest. When you add dairy, protein powders, nuts or vegetables to fruit based smoothies, it makes it difficult to digest fruits and causes digestive issues.

To make smoothies heavier you can add various seeds like flax seeds, chia seeds etc. 

3. Mixing too many different fruits:

Fruits should be eaten with same type of variety. So alkaline fruits should be mixed with alkaline variety and acidic fruits should be added with acidic for most benefit. 

So keep your smoothies simple with 2-3 similar fruit varieties.  

Hoping these simple tips will help you make your smoothies healthier. 

Read More:  3 Ingredient Blueberry Smoothie

Check out more health and wellness content on my other site Simply Cheerful Life

How To Make Jam Using Slow Cooker

Few weeks back we went for strawberry picking with our grand-kids and ended-up picking lot more strawberries than we would consume. How can you blame two very excited 5 year olds !

Two of my Hetzler 3-in-1 Berry Boxes did really good job of keeping strawberries in good shape for more than 2 weeks. They are great value for money and great product to have to reduce the wastage of berries. So even though my Berry Boxes are great help, I needed to make some room in my freeze. So I ended up making some mix-fruit Jam with those freshly picked strawberries.

Just like my Mango Jam, I made this mix-fruit jam using slow cooker as well so no worries about stirring to make sure Jam is not sticking and not splatters of Jam all over the kitchen !

It was very simple to make Jam in crockpot. All I did was crushed the fruits and mixed them with sugar. Rest work was done by my slow-cooker !

Preparation Time 10 Minute
Cook Time 4 hours 20 Minute

Ingredients:
1. 2 cup shredded apple
2.1 cup pineapple puree
3. 1/2 cup strawberry puree
4. 1 cup pineapple  juice ( optional )
5. 2 1/4 cup sugar
6. 2 tbsp lemon ( lime ) juice

Method of making Jam in Crockpot:

1. Combine fruits and sugar in a slow cooker bowl and mix them well.

2. Set slow cooker on high. Make sure to not cover the slow cooker.
3. After about 4 hours mix the fruit puree well and churn it with hand-mixer.
4. Cook for another 20-30 minutes or so until desired consistency is reached.
5. Now transfer jam in a bowl and add lemon juice. Again mix it well.

6. After jam is completely cool, transfer it in a mason Jar.

Jam will be good in freeze at least 1 month in freezer for 6 months. Enjoy with these healthy eggless dinner rolls or with this eggless cinnamon raisin bread.

Similar Slow Cooker Recipes:
Homemade Slow Cooker Gift Recipes
Indian Mix-Vegetable Curry using Slow-Cooker
Slow Cooker Aloo-Gobi (Potato Cauliflower Curry)
Slow Cooker Dal Fry Recipe

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Sending to Healthy Summer Recipe Event and Breakfast Dishes Event.

How To Make Ghee ( Clarified Butter ) In Slow cooker

Ghee is one of the very common ingredient in Indian cooking. It is also used very heavily in traditional Indian medicine also known as Ayurveda and to light holy lamp (diya) in temples and in homes. Ghee is also approved for Paleo Lifestyle .

Me and my daughter have been making ghee at home from butter (unsalted) for a long time on stove top. Few months back my daughter had put butter on stove top to make ghee and she had to attend to kids on middle of it and she ended up burning her ghee ! Since than she has tried making ghee in crock pot and it came out great.

So here is step by step recipe to make ghee in slow cooker. If you do not have slow cooker or would like to follow stove top method, I have provided variation at the bottom of the post.

Ingredients:

2 pound sweet cream butter (unsalted)

Method: Making Ghee in Crockpot/Slow Cooker

1. Place butter in slow cooker and set slow cooker on high. Do not cover it.

2. In 30 minutes or so butter starts melting.

3. About 2 hours into the process butter is melted and is boiling. You can see foam on top.

4.Little over three hours later foam is breaking apart. Water part from butter is evaporating.

5. 4 hours later, all the foam is gone and you can see slight brownish tint. Ghee is ready now.

6. Filter ghee with a Stainless Steel Strainer or cheese cloth. Do not use plastic utensil as ghee is very hot and will melt them. Also please be careful while filtering the ghee as it is very hot and it might burn you.

7. You may store at room temperature or in freeze. It will stay fresh for couple of months at room temperature also.

Variation:
If you do not have slow-cooker or if you wish to make ghee on stove top, you can just put butter in a heavy bottom vessel and put it on low-medium flame. You can follow its melting process just like mentioned in pictures above. Just that it will be much quicker. For 2 lbs it will be about 45 minutes or so. If you have any trouble making ghee send me an email or drop a comment below.

Recipes to makes using Ghee in Slow Cooker:
1. Slow Cooker Carrot Halwa
2. Slow Cooker Sweet Pongal

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