THE Pistachio Ice Cream Kale Shake AKA The King’s Shake

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This is the first ever kale shake I made that didn’t consist of me dumping fruits and kale in a blender and hoping for the best. I’d been in the process of losing weight and had been making kale shakes for several months when I stumbled upon a Pistachio Ice Cream Kale Shake recipe at http://healthyblenderrecipes.com. You can find that recipe here. I don’t know about you, but my favorite ice cream flavor is Pistachio, so I made this shake as soon as possible. I will say I never followed this shake to the extreme, because I live too far away from any Whole Foods store to get stuff like “alcohol-free vanilla extract” and at the time, I was too broke to purchase “raw cashews” when a huge can of Planter’s cashews was under $10 at Wal-Mart. I also have absolutely no idea what “Celtic sea salt is” but I imagined it was, you know, salt, which I omitted anyway because the Planter's cashews were salted already (*gasp* I know).

The shake was amazzzing. Beyond amazing! It was glorious sunshine and rainbows and sugarplums and daisies. Roy was raving about it. I was making us a second helping almost immediately. And we agreed, with stuffed bellies and unzipped pants, that we would forever more have this shake, and only this shake, for breakfast every morning.

Since that time though, I’ve come across tons of other awesome kale shakes that I make every day. Roy will only ever have his favorite, this Pistachio Ice Cream one, so we buy cashews by the large tin now, kale by the case (that’s 24 bunches), and ginger by the pound. Practically. I’ve since changed the original recipe by adding more kale and other greens and reducing the bananas. It’s still amazing, just slightly less carby. And I’ll demonstrate how I make it with tips on making it really ice-creamy. But I’d still recommend, especially if you’re a kale noob, to try the original recipe and work your way to a less sugary, more fibery shake. It takes time. But the fewer sweets you eat, the less you crave them, and if you’re trying to change your lifestyle by losing weight and consuming fewer carbs/sugars, you will eventually want to tone down the sweetness. Not because you’re forced to, but because you seriously will need to. For instance, I can’t stomach a Green Tea Frap that I used to love at Starbucks. It tastes like liquefied sugar to me. (Frankly, it probably is…)

Moving on. The first step is to freeze your bananas and your greens. Roy and I buy kale by the case and bags of spinach and other greens. When I get home, I wash them with vinegar water to kill all the pesticides, insects, mold and feces (I know, freakin’ gross. But what do you think E. coli is?) I use a 1:1 ratio of vinegar and water. I don’t know if you need that much vinegar, but seriously, it’s an inexpensive way to kill off all the harmful stuff you might be eating. Let your veggies soak for ten minutes, rinse well, and start bagging. We buy gallon sized Ziploc bags and fill them up, push out as much air as possible, and zip ‘em. Then, I stack them in the freezer. (If you’d see our fridge after bagging up a case of kale, you’d see why we need to flatten and stack the bags.) As for your bananas, wait until they’re super ripe before you peel them and slice them up. I’d say slice them to about 1” cylinders. Spread out the banana chunks on a plate and stick them in the freezer for about half an hour before you bag them up. This will keep them from sticking to each other. When you need them, you just grab as many pieces as you want. I am not fancy shmancy with a flash freezer, so this is my method. Why freeze them you ask? Because this is how you get that creamy consistency in your shake. Using ice will only thicken up your shake, but freezing the bananas (at the very least) is essential to get that ice creaminess. I freeze the greens too so that I’ll need to use less ice, thereby avoiding watering down the shake.

frozen bananas cut up in 1" discs

So for this shake, I grab my first five ingredients (1/2 cup water, ½ cup cashews, a small hunk of ginger equaling roughly a teaspoon, a capful of the vanilla extract, and three TBS of agave) and toss those in the blender. I turn on my Vitamix, crank it up to around variable 3, and let it blend. In the meantime, I get a TBS each of chia and flax seeds and mill those in my coffee grinder. (I call it a coffee grinder, because that’s what it was designed to do, but coffee has never even come close to this puppy.)

You can buy milled flax seeds, but I met a girl a couple of years ago, Rebecca, who was a Nutrition major in college, and she told me that packaged milled flax seeds don’t have as much fiber and protein as flax seeds you mill yourself. I don’t know how or why the protein magically dissipates while in the packaging, but I took her word for it and mill the seeds myself. What’s an extra thirty seconds anyway?

just in case you thought I was lying about it being a gallon of greens...

Once the seeds are milled, I grab my gallon sized Ziploc bag full of greens from my freezer. I started off using only kale, but now I buy all sorts of greens and wash and freeze them in the same bag so that we always have a variety of nutrients in our shakes. Instead of just kale, there’s now spinach, beet greens, baby bok choy, chard, etc. (I left the name Kale Queen though, because Veggie Queen sounds too corny. HA! Pun intended!) Before adding the greens to the already blended cashew cream mix in the blender, I up the variable up slowly to eight and then I add the frozen greens little by little. I still need to use the tamper to get the greens down, but it’s a much easier job, and takes much less time if you do this bit slowly.

After a couple of minutes of blending and making sure the shake is in liquefied state, I add one small disc of a frozen banana. The original recipe calls for two frozen bananas, but Roy says it tastes too banana-y with even half of a frozen banana. So I only add a small chunk. I still recommend that you use more until you get used to the taste and figure out how much you want to use. Once the banana is pulverized, I add the milled chia and flax seeds. This is not on the original recipe, but it’s something I add to all shakes. The chia and flax seeds are chock full of fiber and protein, omegas and God only knows what else. They’re super good for you, and an easy way to up your protein and fiber intake. Also, they provide a nutty flavor (or so they say. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between a shake with and a shake without these.)

Once all the ingredients are in, and the blender doesn’t sound like it’s dying on the inside from chugging along your shake, you're ready to add the ice. The ice not only cools your shake down to a nice refreshing cold temperature, but it adds volume. Roy loves super thick shakes. I like my shakes to be super liquidy. So once his shake is made, I add a ton of ice all at once to the blender for another thirty seconds. I add much less ice for myself, if any at all. It is totally up to you and what your preference is. Thick or thin? Try it both ways. HA!

My Kale King and his mighty goblet

You’ll notice Roy and I have our own cups. I have no idea how many ounces we drink in one shake, but it’s anywhere between 24 and 30 ounces. So I bought these ginormous glass mugs from somewhere, and then got this special marker you can use to draw on glass. Once you bake the glass, it’s permanent, so I made us our very own Kale King and Kale Queen mugs. Aren’t they cute?! And isn't he adorable? Err... I mean manly! And King-ly and such.

So to recap, here is the recipe below to Roy's Kale King Pistachio Ice Cream Kale Shake... (wow that's verbose)..

1/2 cup water
½ cup cashews
1 tsp ginger root
Capful of vanilla extract (or 1 tsp)
3 TBS of agave
Gallon Ziploc bag of mixed frozen greens (approx 4 cups)
1 TBS milled flax seeds
1 TBS milled chia seeds
1/8th (approx) frozen banana
Ice (ice baby)

I know you’ll love this shake. Yes, there aren’t any pistachios in it! And you might think it doesn’t taste like pistachio ice cream. Whatever. I call it that because that’s what it was called on the healthyblenderrecipes site. At home, we call it “Roy’s favorite.” So maybe you guys can refer to it as the King’s Shake. Yeah. I like that. Ok! I’ll have to share with you MY favorite shake. I made it up myself, because I’m pretty badass like that. But I’m sure there are hundreds of very similar recipes on the web. All I’ll tell you for now is that it involves chocolate and peanut butter, and it’s 100% guilt free (unless you’re allergic to peanuts…. then… you shouldn’t drink it, or you’d definitely feel guilty… and a little ill… so… sorry) Til then!

 -Kale Queen