This summer I decided to replace my usual evening meal with a smoothie (most days of the week), so I was excited to receive a book devoted entirely to smoothies. As indicated by the subtitle, all of the recipes in The Blender Girl Smoothies are vegan and gluten-free. What surprised me most about this book (and one of the things I appreciated most) is that there were not a lot of unusual or hard-to-find ingredients in these recipes. There were only 2 ingredients that were a little challenging to find, but I did eventually find them locally and those ingredients were repeated in many of the recipes, so I was able to easily use them up without having to repeat the same recipe 20 times. Each recipe included optional boosters, some of these might be more difficult to find, but I chose to leave the boosters out.
Each recipe also featured nutritional information including protein, carbs, fiber, sugar, calories, and more. While every recipe I tried was very tasty, some of them were so low in calories that I felt they didn't work well for my purpose of meal replacements. There is, however, a section devoted to "dessert" smoothies. These recipes, while still very healthy, have a higher calorie count then smoothies in the other sections of the book, so they worked better for me.
All of the recipes are written to serve 2. Generally, when I make smoothies, I make them just for myself, so I had to divide every recipe in half. I would have preferred single serving recipes, but it did not prove a major inconvenience.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking to incorporate healthy smoothies into their diet.
**Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
