 This video is brought to you in part by our user-supported Vitamix blog, Life is No Yoke. Go to lifeisnoyoke.com to learn more. What you sipping on? The kids don't know I made it, so they won't miss it. Hi, guys, it's Shalva with Life is No Yoke. Today, we are making three high-protein recipes for picky eaters, and we're going to start with our PB&J shake. I am using a cup of unsweetened almond milk. You can do plain. You can do vanilla. This one's plain. I'm using a scoop of protein powder. We use vanilla plant-based protein powder. Lots of different options out there for protein powders, but that's the one that we choose. We're adding a tablespoon of flaxseed, which has some added protein in it, as well. And flax is one of those sneaky ingredients that you can put in something, and it doesn't change the flavor at all. Our kids basically have flax sneakily in everything that they eat, and they have no idea unless they make it with me, and then they know. We're using, ooh, drippy. A tablespoon of peanut butter. It's the peanut butter and jelly shake, so you want it to taste like peanut butter. You can obviously use more nut butter. Both Lenny and I were like, is the recipe really only one tablespoon? We probably would put more in, but it tastes delicious with just one, but obviously feel free to go ham on the nut butter if you want to. And then what makes it jelly-ish is the frozen berries. So I've got frozen, half a cup of frozen blueberries, half a cup of frozen strawberries. I'm gonna put the frozen ingredients on the top, like I do with all of my Vitamix blends. When I'm blending up a smoothie, I wanna do liquid, anything else, and then hard frozen ingredients on the top. So that's how you load up a blender container. And I don't need any ice because I've got frozen ingredients. This is gonna make one 16-ounce smoothie. So if your picky eater is a grown-up, they would drink the whole container full. If your picky eater is a small child, we usually split this in two and do two eight-ounce servings for the kids. This is one of those blenders that is stealth, one of the best deals out there. This blender blends the same as the whole Ascent series, the 82500, the 83500, but has a much smaller price tags. Ventress 1200, V1200 is the way to get a Vitamix for about 300 bucks. All right, so I would say most blenders can blend a smoothie, like even the one that your grandma passed down to you and has been sitting in your cabinet for ever. Like that should be able to handle a smoothie. I'm gonna show you how the V1200 can also make things hot and show you that it can do more than smoothies, but it did make my smoothie just like a juice bar quality and blended it all up. When you're making a smoothie that has protein powder in it, you wanna make sure that you're blending enough that it doesn't taste chalky, like a picky eater is not gonna drink something chalky. And a good life hack for making a protein shake in general, not taste chalky, is adding some rolled oats, like raw rolled oats, and that kinda cuts down on the chalkiness. This one I don't think needs it, but if you have a picky eater that's a texture person, that could help. So this is our peanut butter and jelly shake, PB&J shake. It's chock full of extra protein, but even more importantly, it tastes absolutely delicious, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a cup. So this is one of those that my kids request all the time. And I bring these in the car for when I pick them up from daycare or from school. Does anyone else take on mom tax out of their kids drinks all the time? So good. All right, so here's like a cool, pretty picture of the peanut butter and jelly shake, protein shake. If you wanna get really cute, you can line the cup with peanut butter. My kids love that when they're having this at home. This is one of the recipes in our pain in the mouth cookbook. If you are interested in this, ask your orthodontist and they can get you a copy, pain in the mouth cookbook. Lots of other good recipes in here too. Soups, things that you can eat when you can't chew. All right, we are back for our cashew queso. This is one of our most popular recipes by far. We keep these ingredients in our pantry at all times. We make it at least once a week. You will find it in our fridge. All three of our kids love it. It is packed with protein because it's basically made with nuts and it is delicious and plant-based without knowing or caring that it's plant-based. We do use this as a snack, a high protein snack. We often serve it for a full meal with a lot of accoutrements. But if we're just looking for a quick snack, it's always a yes from our family. This is one that our picky eaters that are grown-ups in our family also really enjoy. So keep that in mind. The only thing that you're gonna do is use less crushed red pepper for those picky eaters. I don't know any picky eaters that like spicy food. That's like part of it, like no spicies. So the ingredients for my cashew queso. Not my cashew queso, the cashew queso. Lenny actually came up with this recipe of all things. A cup of almond milk. If you don't have almond milk, you can do water and just add like a handful of more almonds. And then we're using cashews obviously because the name is cashew queso. And you're gonna use a half a cup of cashews. I like to remind you guys to buy cashew pieces if you're just gonna be blending them up. Last time I used full cashews, but you can see cashew pieces are just like chunks of cashews. They're much less beautiful than the kind you'd get like in a mixed nut bowl. But they're a dollar less a pound. So they're a good buy. We get ours at Trader Joe's, I'm sure they're available in other places. Half a cup of almonds. These are raw almonds. Like unsalted, unroasted raw almonds, raw cashews, same thing. It will taste different if you don't use raw. It's important. And then the secret to making stuff taste cheesy is our nutritional yeast. You can find this at any, like this is Trader Joe's, so they obviously have it. I know Whole Foods carries it, any health food store. And I think even like regular grocery stores now carry it. It gives everything that's plant-based a cheesy flavor. So I used a fourth of a cup of that. Again, I'm loading everything into my Vitamix container. This is the V1200, the Venturist. We use the A3500 every day. It like lives on our counter. That's the best of the best. We do this for a living. So that's what you'll see us using. If we didn't do this for a living, this is probably the model that we would have. I was talking to Lenny earlier about how like you wouldn't walk into a used car or a car lot and be like, give me the best possible car that you have with all the bells and whistles unless you can do that in which case you go. But most of us can't do that. And you would go in and you would talk to the car dealer about what your family needs at this juncture in your life, what you can afford, how many miles you're gonna put on it, what you're using it for. And the best nicest with all the bells and whistles is not always the right answer for everyone. So the Venturist is a really good answer for people that are looking to get into the Vitamix family. They wanna blend. They want that like really good high quality restaurant style blend. But they can't right now get the best of the best of the best. This is the way to get into the Vitamix family and have that same blend quality for much, much less. This is one that we would happily give to our family and friends. And because it works great and it's an awesome, awesome, awesome blender. So no, I said all that. The next ingredient is red pepper. The red pepper is what's gonna give it its color and the flavor. Like it has kind of like a, it's hard to describe. How would you describe the flavor that a red pepper? I don't know. It helps make this dip taste as it is supposed to. It's not a skippable ingredient. And then I'm gonna use garlic powder, a half a teaspoon. Can you use fresh garlic? Yes, of course you can. We're just trying to make it easy for you. And then any onion-based powder. This one is 21 Season Salute from Trader Joe's. What am I like doing a Trader Joe's ad right now? It's onion-based basically and you want one teaspoon of that. And then you're gonna do one and a half teaspoons of salt. Ooh, new salt. You can all watch me try to figure out how to open it. That was like the easiest thing I've ever opened. I thought I was gonna struggle in front of all of you. Okay, so I used all my salt up in the Middle Eastern video from a couple weeks ago. One and a half teaspoons of salt and then a couple of shakes of red pepper. Remember that I said not to put too much of this in for your picky eaters? But it does still kind of bring out the flavor without tasting spicy so you still do want to use a little bit. And if you're making it for yourself, lots more, it's delish. Okay, so this is our cashew queso. We've got almond milk, nutritional yeast, a bunch of spices, red pepper, almonds and cashews. The almonds and cashews are what make this a high protein snack for after school. Does nutritional yeast have any protein in it? Three grams for one tablespoon. We used a fourth of a cup. So there's some extra protein in the nutritional yeast as well. So on a blender that has programs, you can choose the soup setting to blend this up and that's five or six minutes and it will use friction to break up all the ingredients and heat it using the soup setting. This on the V1200, I'm going to set it like a microwave. So I'm just gonna go up, up, up, up, up. And I'm gonna set it to five and a half minutes because that's about how long the soup setting runs. And then I'm just gonna turn it up to 10 which is exactly what the soup setting does. It's just one button to push as opposed to holding it down for, you know, I'm inconveniencing myself minorly to get the exact same thing. And it's gonna do the same thing. It's gonna use friction. It's gonna use the same amount of horsepower to break up these ingredients and you'll see the surprise at the end when it heats it up in here for me. So we're ready to go. I'm gonna go. What I love about those timers is that I just walked away and prepped all the stuff that I was gonna serve that with and I knew that I wasn't gonna leave this. Many things that I start cooking I forget about and this I can't forget about. So remember I said when I open the top it's gonna make. That's my favorite part. That's never gonna get old for me. It's like the wow factor. So now I've got hot, cheesy queso dip that my picky eater is gonna happily eat for a snack. Look at that pour. So good. So, it was so good until that minute. Our kids eat these like this. They have celery, carrots, mostly chips, obviously. These are delicious like blue corn chips but obviously you can also use just regular tortilla chips if your picky eater is very, very picky about what they wanna dip in here. But this is warm and chock full of protein and it keeps really well in the fridge. So this is one of those things we keep in the fridge and then we like warm it up and re-serve it for snacks throughout the week. So you guys remember that I said that this is something that we do for a living. So I serve my kids queso for work and because they're hungry, Lenny and I have been doing this for 10 years. Lenny for 10, me for a little less. But we have a website that basically teaches you how to use your Vitamix, what to make in your Vitamix, how to live a lifestyle that uses your Vitamix. We've got 10 years of information available to you. If you've got a question, we probably have the answer and if it's not answered, reach out to us and we'll answer it. This is what we do. So if you wanna support our work, go to our website and buy through us. And if you already have a Vitamix, tell your friends and family when they eat our delicious queso dip, tell them who sent you, who told you about this delicious queso dip and how they can get their own Vitamix so that they can make it themselves through us. That would be greatly appreciated. All right, so I am just putting the rest of the queso away for the rest of the weak snacks. Ooh, did I pick the right size container? Don't you love it when you pick the absolute best size container? I'm using this red spatula to scrape out everything under the blade and along the base. We'll link this out. This is like a really helpful tool if you're making thicker blends like nut butters and stuff. I'm gonna have to eat some off the top. This did too good of a job. Not gonna make it and not eat it. You guys don't need to watch me try it but I am gonna eat it. Still my favorite after probably eight years, nine years. All right, so I just ran a quick cleaning cycle. I just filled up about a third of the way with warm water and added soap. I rinsed out the container first because queso was a little bit sticky but that is how I clean the Vitamix container. I do it right after I make a recipe and then it cleans super easily. I know it's clean, easy peasy. All right, so we've got one more high protein snack. We're gonna make a muffin, a blender muffin, that uses oats as one of the protein sources and my kids are gonna be very excited that we're making these today because I'm gonna bring them to school because I drank their whole protein shake. I'm not kidding, I really did just drink their whole protein shake. So it's a good thing we had another pick up from school snack on the schedule, which is muffins. So we'll be right back with those. Okay, we lost audio there for a minute so I'm gonna catch you up on what we have in the blender. We're baking blender muffins. We've got almond milk, maple syrup, a banana, rolled oats, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, vanilla, I think that's it. Peanut butter, did I say peanut butter? We blended it up for like 30 seconds. We're gonna put it into a greased pan after we mix in the chalky chips which is something that your picky eaters are going to need in their banana cinnamon muffins. Oh, cinnamon because it just makes them that much easier to palette for people that are picky. So I'm putting about a fourth of a cup of chocolate chips in. These are mini chocolate chips because they're mini muffins and then I'm just gonna stir in my hand because I don't want to blend them up otherwise they'd be like mildly chocolate flavored muffins and that wouldn't be very exciting. So I'm using a mini muffin tin that I greased if you are a whole food plant based person or you don't wanna use extra oil for some reason you can always line it with mini muffin papers. So I'm filling them pretty high. They do rise really well but I like the way that they look really high up. I tried them, filling them just like two thirds of the way and they weren't as like full looking and pretty. So these are one of those things that I like to pack in a Tupperware and bring in the car for school pickup and my kids each eat two or three of them and it's like fun that they get more than one. Like if it was a big muffin, they're like less excited about one big muffin than two or three small muffins. By the way, this is making time for health's blender recipe. We will put the recipe itself on our site and we'll, we've made this a handful of times and we'll probably start kind of editing it to our family's needs but the original recipe that she posted will live on our site so you'll be able to see it there. All right, so I filled my mini muffin tray. I'm gonna put it in the oven. I need to watch the time because the recipe itself calls for like normal size muffins. So we'll watch it but I think it's gonna take nine to like 11 minutes. So we'll set a nine minute timer and we'll see what happens. All right, so they've been in for 10 minutes and I'm gonna take them out and let them cool a little bit in the muffin tin. They'll keep cooking for just another minute. Got crunchy top, so that's good. So remember these have rolled oats and peanut butter in them so they pack a little bit of a protein punch. If you are a picky eater that is an adult, you can always make these in like normal muffin size instead of like gnome sizing. All right, I gotta try one of these. I always make sure there's enough for me too. Delicious. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Yum.