Homebrewed Nutrition

As much as I love real food, sometimes having a quick mix smoothie after a long ride is really nice.  Four to five hours of riding, the last thing I want to do sometimes is cook a meal.  Here is a way to mix up your own batch of recovery smoothie mix, with links and price breakdown.  Next time you purchase a large tub of sport drink mix, save the tub and mix your own into that.  Here are the things you'll want:

You will need these two appliances...
Coffee Grinder  and Digial Food Scale, if you don't have one it is a great investment for cooking and baking they are usually around $10-15 online.

And these Ingredients
You can probably find these things around town at a grocery store in the bulk foods section, here are some prices I usually pay here in Tucson.  I'll be doing the recipe in metric...

1. Soy Protein Isolate - if you can find this in the bulk foods here are some links to a company I buy from.
• 4lbs @ $22 + $4.50 S&H = $6.62/lb | $14.60/kg
• 44lbs @ 161 + 4.50 S&H = $3.76/lb | $8.29/kg <-- I get this and store it through the year.
2. Corn Sugar ~ $1.50/lb | $3.30/kg
3. Cane Sugar ~ $1.00/lb | $2.20/kg
4. Powdered Cinnamon, Ginger, and Vanilla ~ $1/oz | $35.25/kg
5. Salt ~ $1/lb | $2.20/kg

* If you have course salt and sugar you will need to put them in the coffee grinder to make into a fine powder.

This recipe comes off the back of the Cytomax Muscle Milk Naturals Vanilla which tasted good but $48+S&H for 32 servings (~$1.60/serving) is more than I would want to spend consistently.

Time to bust out the scale...

1. 515gm Soy Protein Isolate = $4.26 
2. 200gm Corn Sugar and 100gm Cane Sugar = $.66 and $.44  (remember to grind sugar to powder)
• 2:1 ratio of corn sugar:cane sugar yields the same calories from carbs just not a sweet.
3. 3gm Salt ~$0.01  (remember to add the salt to the sugar when you grind)
4. 16gm Ginger = $.56
5. 8gm Vanilla = $.28
6. 8gm Cinnamon = $.28

Total = $6.50 or $0.20/serving.  Serving size is 1/3 of a cup.

Put all ingredients into the tub and shake until mixed thoroughly.

If you like chocolate you might substitute vanilla with cocoa powder.  I haven't tried it myself, but the next batch I am going to see how it works.