Chaga-Chai Smoothie
If you’re a fan of natural ingredients and superfoods, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of chaga mushroom in the last few years. Dark in color and unusual in appearance, chaga mushrooms have long been used in traditional Asian and Siberian medicine. Despite this, it’s only recently that they’ve started to gain attention in the West for the potential benefits they can offer for health. Chaga is extremely rich in antioxidants, many of which may have health benefits. It also contains reasonable quantities of several important B-complex vitamins and essential minerals.
Ingredients
~ for the tea
1/3 cup ground chaga
½ gallon water
~ for the smoothie
2 frozen bananas
½ cup frozen mango chunks
4 pitted medjool dates
1 tsp maca powder (see notes)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp ground clove
1-2 cups chaga tea (depending on your blender, use as much as you need for a nice, thick smoothie)
Instructions
To make the tea, simply place the ground tea into a slow cooker with the water and cook on low for 8-12 hours.
For the smoothie, add all ingredients to a blender and blend to combine until smooth.
Add love 💗
**I recommend Vitamix blenders because they’re the BEST!**
Serves 2. Enjoy!
NOTES: Maca is a plant from Peru that is actually in the cruciferous family. It is known for its purported adaptogenic properties and has been found to help with balancing hormones, easing menopause symptoms reducing erectile dysfunction. Maca has a pleasant, nutty, almost butterscotch-like taste, making it easy to add the powder to your daily diet in smoothies and lattes. Keep in mind that many of the health benefits of maca only have preliminary studies to support them, so we need more research to say that they hold true in the general population.