Mar 23, 2018 3 min read

The ordeal started in the nutritional supplements aisle of the grocery store. I was going for the vanilla-flavored whey protein powder and got distracted by the row of absolutely delicious-looking protein bars on the shelf above, and I grabbed the wrong stuff.

I didn’t notice my mistake until the next morning, when I pulled back the metal seal on the big, round tub. I’d bought the chocolate powder instead of the vanilla.

And so began my odyssey through what’s known around here as yucky smoothie time. At the end of the long journey is the slushy, mushy fact that kale and chocolate do not go together.

The smoothie has been part of my morning routine for years, ever since kale became the answer to everything. Not liking it enough to cook it for dinner, I decided to bury it in breakfast. I brought home one of those huge bags of kale, jammed a fistful of the curly leaves into the blender, poured in almond milk, added frozen blueberries, sprinkled some flax seeds and topped it with a scoop of yogurt.

The resulting color was dark and mysterious; the blueberries and spinach combined to produce a deep greenish-purple shade that Benjamin Moore has named Approaching Storm.

I was approaching nausea when I tasted it. Kale does not taste like a green at all. It’s something more in the week-old tilapia family. The chocolate powder didn’t help matters.

But that tub of protein powder cost me twenty bucks. I would have to suffer through it. Now, a lesser girl might take the easy route and relax the smoothie nutritional standards a bit, making a concoction of chocolate powder, milk, ice and chocolate syrup, chugging it down while lying to herself that it’s still better than a doughnut.

But that sort of rationalization only leads to actual three-doughnut breakfasts, and I was having none of that.

And so I set out to find the right combination of healthy ingredients to surround and support the chocolate powder.

A banana helps. Don’t amusement parks sell chocolate-covered frozen bananas? I would keep the blueberries, which, while packed with brain nutrients, really don’t taste like much.

Next, I experimented with yogurt flavors. Strawberry works, as do vanilla and coconut. Peach, blueberry and pineapple were flops. Plain yogurt is OK, but what would be the point?

Having rejected the diabolical kale, I pondered other greens. Spinach is almost equal in nutritional value, so I lobbed a bag of baby spinach into the cart.

The next morning I gave it a try. Mix chocolate powder, blueberries, banana, yogurt and some grainy flax into a cauldron and you get something truly objectionable. A stormy, frothy stew.

The farmer: Yuck. Give me some bacon and eggs.

Daughter: The texture is gross.

I found the smoothie to be too spinach-forward. The texture was all wrong. And that color? I wouldn’t paint even the garage floor with it.

But twenty bucks is twenty bucks. I’ll keep scooping out the chocolate powder and keep choking down the smoothies. At this rate, I’ll be done by July. By then I will have earned a doughnut or two.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.