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Strawberry-Basil Smoothie
By Martha Rose Shulman on The New York Times Cooking site; veganized and further adapted by me
Many mornings I go to my computer and The New York Times Cooking site http://cooking.nytimes.com for one of the dozens of interesting smoothie recipes posted by Martha Rose Shulman. Practically all of them can be adapted easily by using non-dairy milk or substituting agave nectar etc. for honey. Because of a recent freezer-door-left-open disaster, I had 1/2 cup of strawberry juice that had to be used, so I ended up turning Shulman's Pineapple-Basil smoothie (which is also very good) into a Strawberry-Basil smoothie, and I recommend it as a lovely treat in basil season.
¼ cup tightly packed basil leaves
170 g6 ounces strawberries, fresh or frozen
240 ml1 cup plain, non-dairy yogurt (I used half strawberry juice melted from frozen berries)
2 medjool dates
1 heaped tablespoon pistachio nuts
15 ml1 tablespoon soaked chia seeds
2 or 3 ice cubes (optional)
Process all ingredients together in a blender until it's as smooth as you like. If you use frozen strawberries, the mixture may be quite thick, and you can add up to 1/3 cup water to blend the smoothie more easily. If you use fresh berries, you can make the mixture colder by adding the optional ice cubes. The recipe makes just under 2 8-ounce cups.
The Times claims to have more than 17,000 recipes at its cooking site, including dozens of vegan ideas or dishes that can be adapted easily. Put "vegan" in the search engine and many recipes will come up, but not all the vegan recipes on the site are so labeled--you will find many more if you spend time there. It's possible to save favorites in your personal recipe box, and, if you want to collect recipes in one place on line, you can import them from other websites.