This healthy smoothie recipe is made with frozen Wild Blueberries, frozen mango, chia seeds, Greek yogurt, and orange juice, and it’s an easy snack for kids and families.
I’ve been on a bit of a wild blueberry binge since returning from a three-day trip to the wild blueberry barrens of Maine last month. Surrounded by thousands of acres of low-lying wild blueberry bushes and stunning views from our home base of Bar Harbor, I was joined by fellow food and nutrition bloggers and top-notch growers, harvesters, processors, and researchers. Read on for some behind-the-scenes images from the tour as well as my newest recipe for Wild Blueberry & Chia Seed Smoothie.
The Wild Blueberry Association of North America hosted my trip, and as you can see, they put me to work harvesting blueberries by hand. While most wild blueberries are harvested nowadays by machines, sometimes the terrain dictates a hand rake!
{Disclosure: All expenses for the trip were paid by WBANA. All thoughts and opinions are my own}
Here’s the harvester! At Cherryfield Foods, they harvest three million pounds of wild blueberries a day during the growing season, which is actually coming to an end. But there’s no need to be sad, because well over 95% of the fruit is frozen. So you can find wild blueberries year round in your supermarket freezer section.
Here’s one of the places where they freeze wild blueberries! We toured Wyman’s processing facility, where we learned that within 24 hours of harvest, the fruit is frozen, so nutrients and freshness are locked in. The blueberries travel throughout the plant where they are washed and frozen with a technique known as IQF: Individually Quick Frozen. {Photographed above are Regan Miller Jones from Healthy Aperture, Danielle Omar from Food Confidence and Carolyn O’Neil with O’Neil on Eating}
So here’s the amazing fact I could barely wrap my brain around on the trip: In the state of Maine alone, there are well over three million different varieties of wild blueberries that grow on the barrens. The end results are tart and sweet flavors and dark and light colors, which make munching your way through a handful so fun to eat. Oh, and here’s another cool fact: One wild blueberry plant can be as big as a football field 🙂
Wild blueberries have twice the antioxidants of the cultivated (tame) variety and they have a more intense, varied flavor. Blueberries—wild and cultivated—are also versatile. I made this smoothie for Simon when he got home from soccer practice yesterday to refuel and re-hydrate him. (It was 90 degrees outside!)
The ingredients are simple: frozen blueberries, frozen mango, vanilla Greek yogurt, orange juice, and chia seeds.
- Serves: 1
- Serving size: 1.75 cups
- Calories: 210
- Fat: 2g
- Saturated fat: 1g
- Carbohydrates: 44g
- Sodium: 60mg
- Fiber: 5g
- Protein: 6g
- ¾ cup 100% orange juice
- ½ cup vanilla Greek yogurt (low-fat or regular)
- ½ cup frozen wild blueberries
- ½ cup frozen mango chunks
- 1 teaspoon chia seeds
- Place the orange juice, yogurt, blueberries, mango, and chia seeds in a blender, and blend until well combined.
- Pour into individual glasses and serve with a straw.
Now, back to my trip to Maine. Besides blueberries, when I think of Maine, images of sailboats and beautiful views come to mind, and so do succulent lobsters, gnarly traps, and colorful buoys.
Lob-Stuh dinner at Islesford Dock Restaurant on Little Cranberry Island.
Everywhere you turn in Bar Harbor are wild blueberries: pie, iced tea, ice cream, you name it.
Goodbye Bar Harbor: View from our hotel, the Bar Harbor Inn.
