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This summer, get your fruit on
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN
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My dad used to crack a raw egg into the blender when he made milkshakes. My brothers and I would watch in mock horror as the sunshiny yolk and viscous goo of the white disappeared in a whir of coffee ice cream, milk, and dash of vanilla extract. "It won’t kill you," he’d say. "It’ll make your hair shiny." He was at least half right. It didn’t kill us. We escaped salmonella poisoning throughout our raw-egg-drinking youth. As for whether it added luster to our hair, though, it’s doubtful. But while a milkshake’s health benefits are questionable at best (good for the soul, sure, but not great for cholesterol levels), the health benefits of a smoothie are indubitable. Usually a blend of some combination of fresh and frozen fruit and juices, yogurt, sorbet, honey, and ice, smoothies are a sweet and satisfying way to ingest a slew of healthy ingredients. A bunch of area establishments grind up the goods. The tattooed crowd in trucker hats and thrift-store chic at the Other Side Café belies the establishment’s Newbury Street address. In addition to its menu of salads and sandwiches, the Other Side offers a range of 16-ounce smoothies in flavors like banana-pineapple-ginger and apple-banana-pear-strawberry (both $4.25). The smoothies, like the beer on tap, get served in pint glasses. The café also offers fresh-squeezed fruit and vegetable juices ($2.75–$4.25) like pear-lemon-ginger and carrot-celery-parsley-spinach. You can actually feel the carrot-orange-beet-ginger juice infusing your dehydrated, sunburned cells with health. Davis Square’s Blue Shirt Café offers a farm stand’s variety of fruit and veggie juices ($3.50–$3.95) and smoothies ($3.50–$4.25). The Creative Cocktail includes wheat grass, pineapple, pear, and mint juice, and the Vegetable Bin has carrot, celery, cucumber, tomato, red pepper, and lime juice. The Hawaiian Song smoothie sings with mango, pineapple, banana, strawberry, guava juice, and sorbet. And with most of the smoothies, you get your choice of one or two "boosters," supplements like calcium, protein, spirulina, echinacea, and vitamin C, each with its own set of health benefits. Pig’s Pizza in Mission Hill is likewise aware of the medicinal properties of smoothies ($3.50–$5.50 for a smoothie and slice): the chalkboard smoothie menu bears the heading "Pig’s Prescriptions." The recently opened juice-bar section of Pig’s offers, among many others, the light and tart Adam and Eve, with apples, lemon, and banana, and the Bacchus, with red and green grapes, orange, pineapple, and papaya. The Dr. Hangover heals with V8, celery, tomato, carrot, and spices. In Coolidge Corner, Jera’s Juice, the juice ’n’ smoothie concoctor extraordinaire, operates out of Paris, a diminutive crêperie. Besides the roughly 15 smoothie options that Jera’s offers, Paris has its own smoothie flavors like Nutella frozen hot chocolate ($2.89–$4.15), a perfect complement to your crêpe. Herrell’s in Harvard Square is best known for its homemade ice cream — with flavors like lime mousse and white Russian — as well as for employing an occasionally surly staff. But through the summer, if you order one of the shop’s smoothies ($4.77), in flavors like raspberry tango or fruit quartet, you get a $2 gift certificate for your next Herrell’s visit. (Herrell’s has an Allston outpost that offers smoothies but no gift certificate.) This is a tempting deal if you haven’t already been seduced by the smoothie stand at the Harvard Square T stop. With crates of peaches, pineapples, and watermelons, the stand offers juices and smoothies ($3.50–$4.50) in every imaginable combination. "Drink any of the above," guarantees the Pig’s Pizza smoothie menu, "and live, love, and laugh longer." That’s a whole lot more appealing than "it won’t kill you." Where to find it: • Blue Shirt Café, 424 Highland Avenue, Somerville, (617) 629-7641. • Harvard Square Red Line T Stop, 1400 Mass Ave, Cambridge. • Herrell’s, 15 Dunster Street, Cambridge, (617) 497-2179; 155 Brighton Avenue, Allston, (617) 782-9599. • Other Side Café, 407 Newbury Street, Boston, (617) 536-9477. • Paris/Jera’s Juice, 278 Harvard Street, Brookline, (617) 232-1770. • Pig’s Pizza, Huntington Avenue and Smith Street, Boston, (617) 277-7161.
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