The following is a guest post by Leah Vanderveldt, a Brooklyn-based wellness writer and recipe developer. You can find Leah’s blog here.
 

When the weather turns cold, smoothies usually move down to the bottom of the breakfast queue. Most smoothies are just too cooling and refreshing to stay in the rotation for the winter, as I find myself needing foods that warm my body from the inside out. But sometimes I still crave them, so the solution? Making smoothies with warming spices like ginger and cinnamon and grounding root vegetables like sweet potato. These spices also happen to take this smoothie into holiday flavored territory, especially when I use a little gut-friendly Ginger Spice & Everything Nice kombucha (formerly Holiday Cheers).

We roast the sweet potato in advance to put this in the quick breakfast category, but you could also use 1 heaped cup of canned butternut squash or sweet potato puree in this instead. I like to roast a few sweet potatoes at the beginning of the week so I can make this smoothie when the mood strikes. 

Ingredients

• ½ cup coconut milk (or milk of choice)
• ¼ cup Ginger Spice & Everything Nice kombucha
• 1 small roasted sweet potato (or half a large) cooled and skin removed
• 1 scant cup frozen cauliflower
• 1 medjool date, pit removed
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon cardamom
• 1 tablespoon almond butter

• 1 tablespoon flax seeds

Topping suggestions

• Toasted pecans
• Toasted coconut
• Hemp seeds
• Granola
• Pomegranate seeds

Method

• To roast sweet potato(es): Heat the oven to 375°F. Scrub sweet potatoes and puncture skin with a fork, place on a lined baking tray, and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until soft when squeezed. Let cool before handling. You can store your sweet potatoes in the fridge and easily peel off the skin right before you use them.
• Place all the ingredients — besides the toppings — in your blender and puree until smooth, scraping down the sides with a rubber spatula as needed.
• Once blended, serve in a bowl or jar and top with toppings.

Today's blog is written by our very own Daina Trout, MS, MPH

Daina is not just our Co-Founder, she is also a nutritionist that has spent her adult life dedicated to finding and sharing health and wellness through food. With 2 masters' degrees in nutritional biochemistry and public health, Daina has called upon her education often while leading the way at Health-Ade - from how we make every batch of kombucha, to how we talk about gut health to consumers, to even how healthy our employee workplace is! She even writes a few blogs here and there. Happy reading! :)