Coffee Bean Smoothie

GOOD MORNING!! Happy, happy holidays. It really is the most wonderful time of the year – I mean, outside of the sheer anxiety I’ve had for the last week trying to do 45784753759024 hours of work and hit 34920 deadlines in 3 days but hey, the light at the end of the tunnel (that tunnel being a 12-hour drive toward snow) is me, parked on my mom’s couch with a glass of pinot, being served cookies. Surrounded by presents. And puppies. And I plan to sleep a lot. Everything is great. I’m headed to the frigid Midwest this year, and it’ll be my first time back home for Christmas in 3 years. I am BEYOND excited, and I can’t even imagine the horror and regret I’m going to experience as soon as I hit Indiana to get gas and realize I have no appropriate clothing for the weather that’s happening up there. I just have to keep thinking about the cookies….pinot….cookies…

So, with the holidays on my mind, I was thinking, gee, wouldn’t it be fun to do some sort of overnight, healthy egg bake in the slow cooker to wake up to on Christmas morning?

And then I thought….absolutely not. I am just OVER egg bakes during the holidays, really. It’s just so cliche and, really, who has time to eat in the morning when there are presents, a thousand different things going into the oven, and yeah, the whole house needs to be deep cleaned NOW. —> (if you want a FULLY  accurate picture of me cleaning my house, watch this video.) But what we do need is caffeine and lots of it. That’s where I come in with this coffee bean smoothie. We’re going straight to the source.

This is sort of like a coffee IV drip.

Or at least the next best thing. And guess what? You’re still getting a totally PHFF-balanced breakfast in about 2 minutes. Blend, sip, and go.

I would suggest high-quality coffee beans for this – I would actually always suggest high-quality coffee because it tastes better and gives you more energy, but especially for this smoothie, you’ll want something that doesn’t taste like burnt plastic (Folgers).

The slightly crunchy beans gives this smoothie a real cookies n’ cream vibe, without the cookie. I bet if you used chocolate protein instead of vanilla it would taste even more like it. I’m definitely going to try that the next time I have some chocolate protein powder lying around.

Speaking of protein, real quick – I do like having a tub of it on hand. It’s not something I recommend eating every day, as I’m a big promoter of getting protein via whole foods, but there are some really incredible brands out there now that are free of the artificial crap.

OK here we go – let’s get jacked.

Coffee Bean Smoothie

Author: Megan Hansen

Prep time: 2 mins

Cook time: 2 mins

Total time: 4 mins

Serves: 1

No need to carry both your coffee and your morning smoothie with you – just combine them. This smoothie uses ground coffee beans instead of brewed coffee, making it more potent and giving it a little crunch.

Ingredients

• 1/2 frozen banana

• 1 Tbsp coffee grounds

• 3/4 c unsweetened almond milk

• 1 Tbsp peanut butter

• 1 Tbsp chia seeds

• 1 scoop vanilla protein (~25 g protein)

Instructions

1. Combine everything in a blender and blend.

2. Add more liquid, if necessary.

Serving size: 1

Fat: 13

Carbohydrates: 24

Fiber: 7

Protein: 35

Notes

Feel free to add a big handful of spinach – you won’t taste it, but it’s an easy way to sneak in greens.

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