For this post, dear readers, I am going to dispense with thumbnail celeb bios and cut to the chase. I am presenting these in the order that I think they emerged, I’m guessing from the mid-1960s to fairly recently.
Sid Caesar’s Healthy “Mush”
1 cup dry cereal, something healthy, like shredded wheat
1 cup strawberries or canned fruit in light syrup
1/4 cup dried apricots or other dried fruit
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 teaspoon finely chopped ginger
2 bananas
1 cup skim milk
Throw everything in the blender. Serves 2. This sounds revolting, but Caesar lived to be 91, so…
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Jake of Body by Jake’s Shake
Jake “Body by Jake” Steinfeld burst onto the scene in the 1980s and he’s still going strong, with lots of products you can buy at Wal-Mart and appointments to things like Chairman of the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils.
2 cups orange juice
1 cup crushed ice
1/2 cup strawberries
1 medium-sized banana
Into the blender it goes. Serves 1. I, personally, would add 1 cup (at least) light rum and serve this as a nutritious light brunch option, and would say it serves 2.
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And now, our birthday celebrity:
Jennifer Lopez’s Berry Berry Good Smoothie
I am happy to know that today is JLo’s birthday and sad to know that this premiered on quack Dr. Oz’s show (Dr. Oz is currently the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, and really I suppose nothing should surprise us anymore) as part of Jenny From The Block’s spon con appearance promoting her then-new line of protein powders.
½ scoop of protein powder in vanilla or chocolate
1 ½ cups of strawberries
½ cup blueberries
½ cup raspberries
½ cup Greek yogurt OR non-dairy yogurt plain
½ teaspoon cinnamon optional
1 tablespoon honey
½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
¼ cup ice
Add ingredients to your blender in this precise order, according to Jen. She presumably has her “housekeeper” or Ben Affleck do this for her.
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Gwyneth Paltrow’s Peachy Protein Breakfast Smoothie
This was unleashed upon the world in the pages of Redbook Magazine (1903—2019), RIP.
1 cup frozen peaches
2 cups whole fat coconut milk
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (available at most health food stores, but you can also use a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice)
1 tsp freshly grated ginger
2 tbsp almond butter
1 scoop vanilla brown rice, hemp or pea-based protein powder (such as Vega, Living Harvest or Sun Warrior) (optional)
1 tbsp ground flaxseed (optional)
A few sprinkles of toasted (or raw) coconut (optional)
Blenderize until smooth.
I am perhaps irrationally opposed to Goop in principle, but maybe around Thanksgiving I would take the first four ingredients, add a healthy ration of bourbon or whisk(e)y, warm it up, and serve while expressing my gratitude that in this Great Republic of Ours a woman like Gwyneth Paltrow can thrive.
I was a little surprised the Body By Jake one was the most normal sounding one.
But I vaguely remember his deal was making fitness as simple as possible, so maybe it makes sense that he skipped all of the powders and spices.
I think Body by Jake got in on the ground floor, sometime in the 1970s when bodybuilding went from “things that homosexuals do because they like to look at the magazines” to “Pumping Iron”-era “this is how you get the hot chicks.” Jogging/running took off around the same time (poor Jim Fixx, felled by a heart attack while jogging) and then of course the Queen of Aerobicizing, Jane Fonda (or Richard Simmons, depending on how old you were when you took it up in the ’70s/early 80s.)
I appreciate the cocktailization of these. Well done!
To my mind, when you are mixing fruit, juice(s), ice, and maybe some cream-based ingredient, you are making a daiquiri, a margarita, or a piña colada. “But Mattie, you drink these in the morning to give you energy!” “But conversation partner, that’s why God created coffee and the Bloody Mary!” Or my favorite, actually, is the 1920s classic “The Sunrise” or “The Eye-Opener,” which is gin and orange juice, and that is weird because I don’t drink a lot of gin.
Smoothie King used to have one that was banana, strawberry, chopped pineapple, and the best part was that instead of blending with ice or milk or whatever, it was fucking blended with orange sherbert. Fantastic and delicious and not healthy at all.
On days I work out, I make a smoothy in the magic bullet with a banana, a cup of milk, a 6oz. Tillamook huckleberry yogurt, some ice & a handful of blueberries. It is the perfect light breakfast energy boost.
I will have to take your word for it. Gym rat Better Half usually eats whatever I make for him when he returns from his early-morning workouts, but it’s been so hot that lately he’s just been throwing blueberries in a bowl with either plain or vanilla yogurt. I should really make him your smoothie; I bet he’d like it. We don’t have a magic bullet, though, I don’t know what that is, but we do have an industrial grade blender that, as far as I know, could liquify steel if I let it go long enough.
Basically, as single serve blender. Great for grinding spices together too.
https://www.nutribullet.com/magic-bullet/blenders/original-magic-bullet/
Oh! Out of context I would have imagined it might be something that cost in the hundreds of dollars from the Goop catalog but from your comment I figured it was something like that. I wonder how it got its name. I guess it looks like a bullet? I wonder if they’re going to do a rebrand now that non-benign bullets are flying everywhere, every day.
Sid Caesar’s “Healthy Mush” sounds terrible, but I would still eat it because Sid Caesar.
I like smoothies, and a couple of these sound pretty tasty. My usual version is meant to use up whatever fruit is wilting on the counter (currently bananas and peaches) and whatever carton of yogurt (I think there’s a couple of blueberry ones) has been lurking in the back of the fridge the longest. I’ll have to try adding coconut milk to those. I also add a spoonful of ground flaxseed.
My throat is sore, so I think I’m going to make a peach-banana-blueberry smoothie for lunch. Thanks for the idea!
I was confused for a moment because I thought it was Jake the Snake (as in rassler not Body By Jake) Shake which would have been way too much alliteration and confusion for me to handle as Jake the Snake does not strike me as a Smoothie Guy.
He might be! I think a lot of wrestlers/bodybuilders supplement their steroid diets with protein-based shakes and smoothies. I once wandered into a “health food” store looking for a vitamin or supplement I was told by a woo-filled friend would do something, I can’t even remember what, like powder of [something] to alleviate cold symptoms or something, and an over-enthusiastic and much-steroided employee latched on to me. Grinning somewhat maniacally, he brought me over to the protein powder/muscle powder/dried snake oil aisles (more than one) to upsell me all kinds of power-shake ingredients. At the time I was a reasonably fit early 30-something with no desire to do anything like this, so I said, as calmly as I could, “Thanks! This was really helpful!” and took off before he could dislocate my jaw.
Across the street was a Duane Reade, where the petite, complete sane and unflappable pharmacist listened to my plight and recommended something over the counter that worked. I am in the grip of Big Pharma.