Tag Archives: green smoothies

Green Smoothies

Now that I’ve been using my Tribest blender for a few weeks, I wanted to show what my prep setup looks like. I’m still testing out different mixes, but it’s possible for me to prepare four smoothies ahead of time at once.

Each cup contained a mix of:

  • Frozen apricots
  • Frozen raspberries
  • Frozen cranberries
  • Fresh spinach
  • Chopped almonds

I’m fine putting my frozen fruit in the night before, but even doing it on a Sunday evening was fine. If the apricots are still frozen, they don’t blend very well and honestly I don’t like my smoothies to be too cold during the colder months. I’m already cold enough when I get out of my warm bed to get to the gym. Brrr!

To finish the smoothie, I use a separate small jar to grind up some fresh flax seed and then I add that and some milk or water to my smoothie mix and blend.

On weekends, I make smoothies for Kay as well, usually with some of our weekend juice. We only buy juice on the weekend, so it’s usually a treat, but I definitely think it makes the smoothies tastier sometimes. Here we were celebrating Valentine’s Day with some of Kay’s homemade gluten free chocolate buns! (NOM).

I mainly stick to milk or water during the week for the extra protein from the milk and to avoid too much sugar from the juice, but mostly it’s because we are not in the habit of buying juice for use during the week.

With this setup, I prepare my flax seed to be ground the night before. In the morning I give the flax seed a quick pulse before grabbing a smoothie cup from the fridge. The whole process of blending and drinking takes about five minutes. I try to pack a protein, vitamins and iron from the spinach in so that I’m not too hungry before my post-workout snack at work.

If you drink smoothies, how much prep do you do the night before?

Tribest Personal Blender Review

In another effort to get more protein, fruit, vitamins and more in my diet at breakfast, I was keen on buying a personal blender in January. I debated between the Nutribullet and what I now know is the Tribest Personal Blender.

I say “now know” because at the time, the blender’s manufacturer on the Personal Blender’s pages was listed as Vitamix, which is a little wonky and they have since changed it and added a link pointing to a Tribest page. Seeing as Kunzvital printed their own user manual with Kunzvital branding on a folded A4 paper, I think they were trying to market the Tribest blender as their own creation, which it is not. It ships in a box with Tribest labeling for heaven’s sake.

(Tribest blender re-branded by Kunzvital)

I was a little annoyed that the same blender is available for $89.95 on Amazon with a US plug, while I had to pay 165CHF ($171) to get it. It’s a big, fat, Swiss markup.

I have mixed feelings about how it works, but I like the blender alright. Sometimes I feel like it does a great job of blending and other times I really feel like I am eating my smoothie, which is not cool when it’s spinach leaves or nuts. Last week I was on a date kick and the blender just whirled the dates around the whole time, knocking into the blades, but not breaking down at all.

The blender also advertises that it cuts up ice, but if you stick only ice in here… one cube for example, it does not do well with either the grinding or the mixing blade. But if you put an ice cube in the mix with your spinach, fruit, juice or water and more, it does fine and grinds up well.

In the end, I’m still happy I bought this for now, because my other option was spending over 1000CHF for a Vitamix, which are also a lot more expensive in Switzerland than the US. Maybe I will still get one one day, but I do really like the convenience of washing and using single-use mixing cups for work every morning. I think the Vitamix would be annoying to clean every day. Who knows!

Do you have a special blender for breakfast smoothies?