Strawberry Mango Smoothies

Hello and welcome to my very first blog for our recipe section! If you’ve never been here before, we are the Vegan Voyagers and are traveling the US in an RV with 5 cats, a dog, and a silkie chicken named Brienne of Tarth. I’ve been wanting to highlight our own recipes for a while now, but just haven’t had the time, until now. I decided to start with something simple and I’ve been LOVING smoothie bowls these days. They’re so delicious, versatile, and so easy to make, like these strawberry mango smoothies!

If you want to just read the recipe, go ahead and scroll down, but I have a story to tell you, so definitely keep reading if you want to hear about the hilarity that ensued in the making of these delicious strawberry mango smoothies. 

I’ve been researching food photography for awhile and just haven’t had the motivation to actually pick up the camera and learn how to use it. I get self-conscious that my photos won’t be magazine cover ready, but I realized that I have to start somewhere. Practice makes perfect! I’ve been making smoothie bowls for a while and I’ve gotten pretty confident about making them look pretty, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t just go with what I know. I had to “think outside the box” and wanted a 2-toned look. Seems easy enough, right? Just make 2 different colored smoothies and layer them. (It really is that easy!)

Today, however, just wasn’t my day. I spent an hour trying to set up my camera, the table to set it on, went through the trouble of using props to get the lighting I wanted, before even making the smoothies. So, I was all ready to go and brought out the frozen fruit. I started with the mango smoothie and put in my frozen fruit and started to pour the milk into the blender. I’ve made the mistake in the past that they come out too watery, so I try to use the least amount of milk, to avoid that. So the blender was having some trouble mixing everything around (I use a Vitamix, so it really needed that extra liquid), however, I was too stubborn and thought I could just use a spoon to help get it going. It was working, until I dipped the spoon too low, it hit the blade and sent mango smoothie flying ALL OVER THE PLACE! I mean, it was on the ceiling, all over me, on the floor- a complete nightmare.

Right then and there I almost quit with this whole food photography thing and sat on the floor crying (with smoothie dropping on me from the ceiling.) It can’t be worth all the trouble, right?? However, I had put too much effort into this shoot to stop now. 

These didn’t turn out perfectly, but I was pretty happy with what I was able to accomplish on my first day on the job. Let me know what you think!

Recipe

Mango Smoothie: 
1 frozen banana
Handful of frozen mango 
3/4 cup of almond milk

Strawberry Smoothie:
1 frozen banana
Handful of frozen strawberries
3/4 cup of almond milk 

Toppings*:
Granola
Fresh fruit
Hemp seeds
Chia seeds
Coconut flakes 

*whatever your heart desires!

Directions: 
Throw all ingredients into a blender and blend until desired consistency. Add more milk if it comes out too thick. Then, simply pour one smoothie in the bottom of the glass and top with the other. If they aren’t too thin, they should easily stay separated. 

XO
Hayden