The Organic Climber – Vegetarian running, cycling, swimming, rock climbing and raw foods.

Hello, from Austin! Today’s edition of Smoothie Tuesday comes to you from my new home in Austin, Texas. You may remember my recent post about a lovely lady named Kristy. Well, we are engaged and getting married in November. It feels great to be in such an amazing city. There are some many vegetarian friendly restaurants here; there are even several raw food establishments. The one that is most well known is called Daily Juice. I actually haven’t been yet, but will probably make a trip there sometime soon.

Not only does Austin have lots of great food, but also there are plenty of recreational opportunities here. I will have not shortage of places to run, cycle, and climb. The live music scene here is also awesome. I think I am really going to feel at home here.

Anyway, today’s smoothie recipe is truly a superfood. Inspired by Naked Juice, I decided to make my own at home because I love the taste of the Naked drinks, but I’m unable to digest them well. I always end up with a weird stomachache. I assume it’s because of the flash pasteurization the drinks are put through. The process kills a lot of the beneficial enzymes that aide in digestion. But, this homemade version leaves all those nutritious enzymes fully intact.

The Recipe (serves 2)

• 2 Apples
• 1 whole mango (a smaller one)
• 2 kiwis
• 4 chunks of chopped pineapple
• 1 whole banana
• 1 small hand full of green
• 2 Tsp of wheat grass powder
• 1 Tbsp of Spirulina
• Apx. 2 cups of water

Place all the ingredients in a blender and process thoroughly. If you have a Vita-Mix blender this will be a fairly quick process, but other blenders will take a lot longer to break everything down, especially the greens.

I also apologize for there being no photo this time. I tried, but the lighting in my fiancees apartment is horrible, I couldn’t get my own reflection out of the glass, no matter how hard I worked different angles. Hopefully I get this figured out before next weeks post.

Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
homemade, juice, naked, smoothie, spirulina, SuperFood, wheat grass
2 comments

---

Over the past month or so, I have heard numerous runners talk about or tweet about Cliff Shot Bloks. After finding out what the were, I decided I could make my own raw homemade version of them. What I developed was based on the energy gels and drinks I have seen in Brendan Brazier’s Thrive Diet, but I went the extra mile with mine and added chocolate flavoring!

What I developed was a calorie rich droplets that provide carbs, protein and electrolytes. Each droplet contains: dates, agave nectar, cacao powder (for a yummy chocolate flavor), chia seeds (for a longer release of energy and protein), lemon and lime juice, and ground sunflower seeds for their anti-inflammatory effects. The dates are a good source of carbohydrates and are also high in calories. The chia seeds help slow down the break-down of glucose, thus giving you longer lasting energy, the lemon and lime juice assist in replenishing electrolytes. The sunflower seeds were sort of added on accident because I didn’t have pumpkin seeds, but I’m thinking the sunflower seeds were the better option because they are high in protein and have anti-inflammatory properties.

I used the shot bloks the next morning on my 10 mile run. I didn’t cary any energy gels, just the bloks and a raw energy drink I made. I felt pretty charged the entire run, I think things really started kicking in around mile five; at this point I had consumed around five of the ten bloks I carried with me. I brought 10 bloks with me, but probably only consumed eight of those ten because I dropped the bag I was carrying them in at some point.

The only draw back I found was that the bloks mash together fairly easily. I had placed them in the back pocket of my bike jersey that I wore for the run and ended up sitting back on them on the drive to the trail, what I ended up with was shot mush instead of bloks,  but they were still fairly easy to consume. I would suggest dehydrating the blocks for longer so they harden up a bit more than they did for me, but also proper storage will help keep your blocks in tact.

These tasty little treats would be great for taking on long runs and even climbing trips. I plan on making another batch on my next trip to the crag coming up here in March. The cost to make these is pretty low too. Eight dates will run about about $1.67, the other items are bulk items (aside from the lemon and lime) so the cost there is very minimal. My guess would be that 24 bloks will cost you around $2.75.

The Recipe

• 8 pitted dates
• 1/8 cup of agave nectar
• 1 TBSP of cacao powder
• 1/2 TBSP of chia seeds
• 1/8 cup of sunflower seeds ground into powder (using coffee grinder)
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• juice of 1/2 a lime

Directions: Place all the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until thoroughly mixed, scrapping the sides of the walls periodically. When finished you should have a fairly thick consistency, if not, add a couple of more dates. Once you have a thick consistency, using a spoon, dish out small dollops of the mixture onto a non-stick dehydrator sheet, you should be able to get about 24 shot blok size drops. Once you have the dollops on the sheet, wet your fingers and shape into squares as best you can.

After you have shaped your bloks, place in the dehydrator at around 110 degrees for 12-20 hours. I pulled mine out at around 12 for my morning run, they probably could have been left in a lot longer. These should keep well for several days, but I recommend using them as soon as possible, so if you are not going to use all of them in a few days I would cut the recipe in half.

Climbing, Cross Training, Health & Fitness, RAW Food, Recipes by OrganicClimber
Cliff, Climbing, electrolytes, enrgy, gel, homemade, homemade cliff shot bloks, RAW, Running, Shot Bloks
11 comments

---