chocolate ice cream… for breakfast!

the greatest day of my life was probably the day that I realized that it was not only completely acceptable, but also actually healthy, to eat chocolate ice cream for breakfast. Okay, maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration – but still. The discovery of the smoothie bowl was a pretty serious game changer. So, for those of you who aren’t currently eating chocolate ice cream first thing in the morning, hold tight, because your morning routine is about to get rocked. There are a million different types of “smoothie bowls” you can make – the idea behind it is essentially just a slightly less liquid smoothie that is served in a bowl instead of a glass. Surely there’s some impressive psychological reason for why eating something with a spoon out of a bowl makes it much more filling than drinking it from a glass, but I just know that where regular morning smoothies never seem to fill me up, a thick and delicious smoothie bowl is always enough to get me through the morning. So why a smoothie bowl, instead of just a regular plate of fresh fruit? One of the reasons is that you can sneak all sorts of healthy additions into a smoothie bowl, things that would be a litttle bit more noticable when added to a plate of fruit – like greens, for example. There aren’t too many people out there who would be stoked to see a massive pile of kale on top of their chopped strawberries and blueberries, but in a smoothie bowl, you can dump all kinds of kale, spinach, and even chard if you’re feeling saucy, and you won’t be able to taste it at all (just be careful about coloring… sometimes too much green can leave you with a really weird looking bowl. That’s why I love the chocolate ones – it makes sense for them to be a slightly questionable brown shade!) Also, you can add some really nutritious and wonderful toppings to your blended bowl that would be a little less easy to get onto a regular plate – bee pollen, hemp seeds, goji berries, even some maca powder or chia seeds. Literally limitless options here, and you can tailor it to exactly what your morning holds: feeling a little sleepy? Add in a spoonful of maca powder. Have a super-intense workout planned? Sprinkle on some hemp seeds. Need a little extra sustainable energy? Toss in some raisins. The list goes on and on. Or just sprinkle cacao nibs on top of it, because who doesn’t need a little extra chocolate? The main point is that you have so many more options to play around with a smoothie bowl, and it offers a wonderful way to fuel and nourish your body in the mornings, while still making for a really delicious breakfast.

My favorite smoothie bowl recipe is the one pictured below, which is just a simple chocolate-banana bowl, but there are hundreds of different recipes and mixtures you can throw together. There is usually a base of frozen bananas, but after that, the possibilities are absolutely endless. This one consists of:

1 1/2 frozen banana

2 tbsp raw cacao powder

1 tbsp maca powder

1/2 cup hemp milk

1 tbsp peanut butter

1 handful of kale (frozen optional)

1 handful of spinach

1 dried, pitted Medjool date

to make it, simply toss all of these things into a blender, and let it blend until smooth. Then pour it into a bowl and add toppings! I put in walnuts, bee pollen, chia seeds, hemp seeds, raisins, and goji berries, and sprinkled it all with a little bit of cinnamon. Happy breakfasting!