My girl is in the kitchen again and I can’t get her out. She was so excited to meet Chef Charlie Ayers a couple weeks ago.  She had to get his latest cookbook “Food 2.0 – Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google“” and immediately start trying his recipes. The cookbook covers everything from breakfasts to snacks, smoothies, salads, sides and main meal items. I was drawn to the visual pop of fresh food pictures. My tween dove right into the narrative around the the healthy benefits of the ingredients being used and food preparation (which covers almost the first half of the book).

Meeting Chef Charlie Ayers

My tween’s first test of the cookbook was making smoothies. It wasn’t hard to find smoothies that she wanted to make. The harder part was narrowing down the selection among the fifteen different recipes. She wanted to do a formal taste test – so she narrowed her selections down to three smoothies: Jade Smoothie, Smoothie Sandia and Mount Shasta Fruit Smoothie.

Although the cookbook is intended for an adult audience, my girl dove right in and mixed and measured her own smoothies. She was meticulous about the suggested fruit garnish (probably from watching so many cooking competition shows where presentation plays a key role in judging).

3 smoothies ready to taste

Let the smoothie review begin!

Our tween chef has so much fun making these smoothies – now it’s time to taste!  She wanted to make the taste test official- so she had her notebook and pencil ready.

Hard at work reviewing the smoothies

Smoothie #1:  Jade Smoothie

• Ingredients:  cucumber, fresh mint leaves, apple cider, lemon sorbet, ice
• Review:  “This is really good.  My favorite part was the nice fluffy layer on the top”

Smoothie #2:   Smoothie Sandia

• Ingredients:  blueberries, pineapple juice, honey, watermelon
• Review:  “Fresh watermelon tastes perfect for a pool party”

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