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

Since my bike accident last Friday, I have been pumping my body full of anti-inflammatory goodness including this delicious smoothie. Named in honor of Texas – The Longhorn Smoothie! Seeing as how I now live in the Capitol of Texas, I thought it would be very fitting. Sorry there are no pictures for this one. But, I do promise it’s tasty.

The Recipe

• Apx. 1 Cup of Almond Milk
• 6oz of Pineapple
• 1 Fresh Peach, or the frozen equivalent
• 1 hand full of frozen cherries (or fresh if you have them)
• 2 TBSp of Agave Nectar or Raw Honey
• Optional: Greens and protein powder, or a hand full of fresh greens. Spinach is my favorite

Process in a blender until smooth. Of course, I recommend the Vita-Mix blender! There really is nothing better, honestly! You can get FREE SHIPPING, by using this link.

Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
cherries, cherry, longhorn, peaches, pineapple, smoothie, texas
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Lately I have been bad about recording down my smoothie ideas and successful concoctions. Not intending to brag, but just about every smoothie I create comes out wonderful! There is the occasional mess up though, but it’s usually just too strong in a certain flavor. For example one I made a couple weeks ago contained pineapple and it ended up having a very strong/sharp taste due to having too much pineapple in it.

Most of my creations come about by accident. I don’t typically set out to design a great smoothie. What usually happens is I am out of something what I typically make, so I rummage around the fridge and fruit basket to see what I can find.

My most recent creation is a strawberry pineapple mango smoothie. Typically I would just throw in strawberries and banana, but all I had that I thought would work was mangoes. This is actually my go to fruit to mix in when I am out of banana. That has been the case a lot lately since the grocery store seems to only have non-ripe bananas that I have to wait for to ripen.

Anyway, this smoothie is simple and straight forward….

The Recipe

• Approximately 5oz of freshly cut pineapple,
• About 6 frozen strawberries
• Approximately 4oz of
• ½ dropper of stevia
• 1 TBSP of raw tahini
• 1 cup of hemp seed milk
• Your choice of greens, greens powder, and or hemp seed protein (optional)
• 1 TBSP of optional flax meal (optional)

This smoothie is great for relieving inflammation due to the pineapple and flax seed. I have been making a lot of highly anti-inflammatory smoothies lately due to my shoulder bursitis I have suffered since a car accident last June. I previously mentioned this in the Pineapple Grape Smoothie recipe. It does seem the pineapple helps a lot with the inflammation, but as with any food or medicine the effects wear off. So, I’m trying as hard as I can to keep as many anti-inflammatory foods in my diet. Sadly, some things I really like to eat, such as dates are highly inflammatory so they can cancel out other foods. So, it’s important to keep an eye on this. Web sites like Nutrition Data will help you determine not only calorie count and nutritional information, but they give you an inflammation index as well.

As a parting note, if you have been following my blog for a while know you may have noticed I used stevia for sweetener instead of agave. This is because I am attempting to include less of this in my diet now. I recently discovered that I possibly have a low performing thyroid, and in order to help improve my thyroid health I am cutting back on sugars. This means less stevia, as well as less bananas. This will be somewhat hard for me as I typically consume a few bananas a day, but I have already started replacing those snacks with healthy raw nuts, with on occasional package of Yumnuts (which I will be reviewing on the blog soon).

I have a big sweet tooth, so making things like Peanut Butter Cup Smoothie will have to become less frequent. Both agave and bananas are really high in natural sugar, and agave being high in fructose is not good in mass quantity. I still plan on continuing to use it in my sports drinks and energy bites though as it is high in crabs and releases slowly into the blood stream for longer lasting energy. This is also why it’s safer alternative to sugar for diabetics. But as with anything moderation is key.

Additional Note: This smoothie is VERY high in protein. So, eliminate the protein powder if you want to cut down on this. I think I estimated it had about 28grams total.

RAW Food, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
agave, anti-inflamatory, inflamation, pineapple, recovery, smoothie, stevia, tahini
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Okay, I know it’s Wednesday, but I’m long overdue for a post. Life has been extremely busy lately. I have been gearing up for a move that will hopefully take place soon. I recently posted Getting confirmation on living the dream, but sometimes plans change. I have come to realize that often times we plan out a path, but God has something else in store for us, big surprises and sometimes disappointments. But in my case, I was thrown a huge curve ball and was pleasantly surprised. To make a long story short (I will post a longer version later) I will be moving to Austin, rather than Colorado, to pursue the girl I first fell in love with nearly two years ago. All I am waiting on before making the move is the sell of my house, which SHOULD happen pretty soon. But I also have to remember that the way I want things to happen may not be best. This could be held up for another month or longer. It has already drug out for two months.

Anyway, on with the smoothie recipe. Yesterday I got back into the climbing gym after not having been in over a week, and prior to that I was lucky if I was getting in the gym once a week. This season has not been filled with as much climbing as I had hoped for. Despite being out of prime climbing shape I decided to run 4×4′s with my climbing friend Scott. Basically you take turns climbing the same route four times, you have on to the next route and repeat the process. You do this until you fall. So, we decided to climb 5.9 routes after warming up on an easy 5.7 climb. We managed to finish 12 laps without any falling, but we both had our first fail at lap 13.

So, we continued on with our 4 laps, getting as high as we could each time. After finishing this, we moved on to bouldering after cooling down on some easier routes. So, in all I climbed about 19 routes and four boulder problems. All this to say, I did A LOT of climbing for being out of shape. I guess it goes to show I wasn’t as out of shape as I thought, but needless to say I needed a good anti-inflammatory recovery smoothie.

This smoothie is chock full of anti-inflammatory goodness and protein. As I have mentioned before pineapple contains bromelain that can be used to help treat sports injuries, trauma, arthiritis and other types of inflamation. I also added ground flax seed as well for a balance of omega three and six. The omega three contains the anti-inflamatory properties needed. So without further or do, here is the recipe…

The Recipe

• About 1/4 – 1/2 a 160z container of chopped or frozen pineapple
• 6-8 fresh strawberries
• 1+ cups of hemp milk
• 1 TBSP of raw tahini (optional, it didn’t affect the flavor much)
• 1/2 TBSP of your favorite greens powder
• 1 TBSP of hemp seed protein

My guess is this smoothie has around 18 grams of protein, I’m not sure what the carb count is, but my guess is around 54 grams, giving you a nice 3 to 1 ration. If you desire something closer to 4 to 1 just eliminate the tahini and replace the hemp milk with water or rice milk.

And don’t forget if you are considering buying a Vita-Mix 5200 blender you can get free shipping by clicking through the links here on my site. Granted these coupon codes are all over the internet, but by clicking through here I actually get a commission. I would be very grateful if you purchased through me! This blender is a powerful workhorse, a purchase you won’t regret if you are eating a lot of raw foods and making lots of smoothies.

  

  

  

  

Climbing, Health & Fitness, RAW Food, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
anti-inflamatory, austin, carbs, Colorado, dream, free shipping, pineapple, protein, recovery, smoothie, strawberry, Vita-MIx, Vitamix discount
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Ahhh, it’s the return of smoothie Tuesday. I know you have been waiting for it. Well, I have a really tasty one for you today. I randomly thought of this one after staring at the frozen grapes in my freezer for weeks – I thought man, those would go great with some pineapple, if only I had some. So, next time I was at the store I picked up some pineapple and ended up making a recovery smoothie later that night after a climbing workout.

This is an excellent recovery smoothie because of the anti-inflammatory properties found in the pineapple. Bromelain is the enzyme in pineapples that contain the anti-inflammatory property, it also helps with digestion, so this smoothie is easy on the stomach, it will also help digest any food consumed after the drink. Additionally  pineapple is high in vitamin C and is great for fighting off colds. I have even been told it’s a great way to help get rid of a cough.

The grapes (as well as the pineapple) are high in anti-oxidants contained in flavonoids, which help slow the aging process. For those of you just starting out vegetarian or are going vegan, grapes are a good source of both calcium and vitamin B6. Grapes also are rich sources of vitamin A and C in addition to  minerals like potassium, iron, phosphorus, and magnesium.

I would also like to note that the inflamed bursitis in my right shoulder has significantly decrease after drinking this smoothie.  I am not sure if there is a direct relation to the large amount of pineapple consumed through blending or not, but I plan on trying this smoothie again if the inflammation comes back. I will be very happy though if I discover thre is a relation, because the inflammation has been with me for almost a year now and I’m doing everything I can to avoid cortisone injections.

The Recipe

• 8oz of freshly cut and diced pineapple
• one big hand full of frozen grapes
• 1 banana
• 1 TBSP of cashew/almond butter (optional)
• 1 TBSP of hem seed protein (optional but great for recovery)
• 1 TBSP of greens powder or 1 hand full of fresh greens
• 1/2 cup of almond milk
• 4 cubes of ice
• water (just enough to cover the fruit and aid with blending)

Directions: Simple; just throw it all in the blender and WHIZ!!

Health & Fitness, RAW Food, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
banana, bursitis, grapes, inflammation, pineapple, protein, recovery, smoothie
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