Our Morning Smoothie: Simple, Healthy, Delicious.

Last month, the kind folks at Almond Breeze reached out to me and said this;

“Hey Urban Daddy!  Are you familiar with Almond Breeze?”

I replied with this; “Familiar???  Absolutely!  In fact, my oldest son and I have a smoothie for breakfast EVERY morning, and instead of using milk, we use unsweetened Almond milk from Almond Breeze!”

“No way”, was what I got back.  “Would you share the recipe for your audience, and we’ll send you some Almond Breeze.”

“Ummm, yeah!  Of course!”

So because we received chocolate almond milk, vanilla almond milk, regular almond milk and unsweetened almond milk, this constitutes a paid post, or compensated post, and as such I must (and I am) declaring it to be so.

The cool part, is that its already something we use, and enjoy, and have been using for years since we cut back on our milk.

Here is our breakfast every single morning;

Into the blender goes the following ingredients:

2 cups Almond Milk, from Almond Breeze.  I like the unsweetened, my son likes the sweetened ones, and before we got to make our first smoothie, he had polished off the chocolate Almond Milk, and by the end of the week, the Vanilla was gone too.  It’s high in protein which helps him as he swims competitively and needs to keep all that muscle on…

I digress… Back to the blender.

1 large banana

a handful of ice cubes

a table spoon of peanut butter

and that’s it!  Blend it on the smoothie setting, and drink and enjoy.

Sometimes, we add, protein powder for him, and a huge handful of spinach for me.  Sometimes I’ll pour in some left over coffee, add a touch of honey and some fibre, but the main ingredients remain the same and it is SO yummy, and fills me until noon.

 

So here are the facts about Almond Breeze which I did not know – so likely you did not know either…

1. Almond Breeze is like a family themselves as they are owned by the Blue Diamond Growers who have been in the almond business for more than 100 years.
2. Almond Breeze is one of the only brands to grow their own almonds

So let’s think about this for a second from the context of parenting and being a family.  Our family doesn’t have a family business which is passed on from generation to generation where the newer generation learns from the older generation and does that work with pride in order to keep up the quality and the respect the family name has earned.  There is a lot of pride, but also a lot of pressure!

It also surprised me – but makes a lot of sense – that this is the only almond milk producer who makes their own almonds.  I’m sure it’s a technical process and finding the right almond for the milk must be difficult as it has to be tasty, not spoil quickly and must be in an area where it leaves the smallest carbon footprint to make the product in order to keep the price reasonable.

It makes me feel comfortable knowing that the almonds are coming from a place where the growers actually care about the product because it’s not just the brand which is on the shelves, but it’s also the growers and their families.

Cooking With Astro Yogourt, Urban Daddy Style

We love Astro Yogourt in The Urban Daddy household.  It’s natural, contains no gelatin and is kosher and for quite a few years now, Stewie would have a bowl of plain 1% or 2% Organic Astro Yogourt with either some sugar-free apple sauce in it, or plain with some sunflower seeds and fresh or frozen fruit.  “Yogourt and seeds” was then and still is now a potential breakfast, lunch and / or dinner.  For many days in that time frame, it was all three.

We went through so much yogourt it was hilarious.  We would buy 4-5 of the large containers a week to keep him fed.

So it only made sense when the amazing folks at Fleishman-Hillard (www.fleishman.ca) reached out to see if myself and a guest wanted to join them for a morning at Nella Cucina (www.nellacucina.ca) in mid-town Toronto for an event called #CookingWithAstro.

Not being the best cook in the entire world but more than capable to read and follow a recipe or directions (ahem: baking class in high-school)  I went to the Astro Yogourt website (www.astro.ca) to choose three recipes to prepare in our two-hour alloted time slot.  I wisely enlisted the services of my wife, to assist me in planning a feast, since she thankfully does all the mealplanning and cooking in our household.

The three dishes we chose from the Astro website were;

Nearly No Fat Fudge Brownies – http://www.astro.ca/recipes/nearly_no_fat_fudge_brownies

Shrimp Corn Chowder – http://www.astro.ca/recipes/shrimp_corn_chowder

Tandoori Roasted Salmon with Biryani Vegetables and Coconut Curry Sauce – http://www.astro.ca/recipes/tandoori_roasted_salmon_with_biryani_vegetables_and_coconut_curry_sauce

Being kosher at home and my wife a vegetarian and well on her way to becoming a holistic nutritionist, she altered the recipes to make them more family-friendly for us.  For the brownies, we removed the water and added orange juice.  For the shrimp corn chowder, we removed the bacon, shrimp and clam juice and we used low sodium vegetable broth and tofu and a lot of colourful peppers instead, and for the tandoori salmon, the only thing we did was replace some of the heavy cream with yogourt.

So on the day of the event, we headed over to Nella Cucina – a high-end kitchen supply store with absolutely everything you could ever want or dream of having in a kitchen in stock and went upstairs to their professional teaching kitchen on the top floor.  There, we were greated by folks from Fleishman Hillard, Nella Cucina and of course, Astro Yogourt.

We chose our cooking station in the middle of the room, received a quick tour of the facilities from Nella Cucini’s Elyse Glaser and Professional Chef Mary Catherine Anderson  @mc_cooks (http://marycatherineanderson.com/) .  We then wasted no time in getting into the recipes, starting with the brownies first.

We sifted, mixed, stirred, cooked, roasted, chopped and zested away on our three recipes far longer than the 2 hours we were scheduled for.  We actually finished these fabulous dishes in just under 3 hours which meant a couple of trips downstairs to the parking meter, and a whole new appreciation for the fantastic meals that my wife cooks for the family at night.  After the three hours I was exhausted!  My wife was still motoring through the dishes, offering up her tofu corn chowder for sampling to everyone still around.

I was chatting with @SympaticoLife and Cynthia from http://www.delectablychic.com/  @DelectablyChic among others to see what fantastic creations they were making.  She put up a great post about the event and took some great pictures; http://www.delectablychic.com/2012/07/cooking-with-astro-yogourt/.  I wanted to take pictures but clearly underestimated the length of time needed to cook the dishes and once I realized I needed pictures of the finished products everyone else was turning over the classroom for the next group and we really needed to leave – not that I felt that way at all, but I know when it’s time to go.

Once all was done, we packed everything up in the Tupperware and cooler that Astro Yogourt so kindly provided us with and headed home with a delicious dinner in hand and smiles on our faces.

Of course we told everyone we knew of this wonderful opportunity to cook with a product we use almost daily, and for the opportunity to have a professional chef available to assist and answer our questions.  We thank Astro for reaching out in the community to promote their products and for giving us the time to attend this event together and cook.  My wife’s recipes were incredible and we ate so well for the next 2 days.  Even 7-year-old Linus loved the Tandoori Salmon.  The biryani vegetables were out of this world and now I have a new resource to go to when I’m helping with meal planning.  If all the recipes tasted this good, then you should consider bookmarking it too.

I encouraged my wife to head over to the Astro Facebook page and enter her altered (or original) recipes to their “Astro Make it Original” contest site; https://www.facebook.com/#!/astroyogourt.  She had to “like” that page, submit the three altered recipes we prepared, submit a picture of the dish with the Astro Original logo and share it with friends or strangers through whatever social media platforms we use.  By doing that she, and you, has a chance to win a Culinary Getaway to NYC for 2 courtesy of Astro Yogourt!  There are weekly prizes available too.

A huge thank you to the great folks at Fleishman-Hillard who assisted in getting this event rolling and including The Urban Daddy; specifically Megan Johnston, Megan Stoudt, Nare Tutundjian and Jacob Porpossian and to Angela Kanaris the Brand Manager, Astro Original.