Need a filling breakfast or a pre-dinner treat? This creamy smoothie will take your taste buds for a spin. Sweetened by a ripe pear, and thickened with almond butter, you can pack in the greens without the slightest taste that they are there, which is a perfect way to increase your veggie intake !

Make sure to leave the skin on your pear, it contains at least three times as many phytonutrients as the flesh, and the skin contains almost half the amount of fiber as the whole fruit.

When trying to determine whether a pear is ripe, don’t squeeze the whole fruit. Instead, gently press only at the top of the pear, near its stem. If it feels soft to the touch, without being mushy, the pear is probably ripe for eating.

Store pears at room temperature, and depending on the variety, they will ripen in a few days. If you want to speed things up, place the pears in a paper bag with a ripe banana or apple. The pears will soak up the ethylene gas and then start to produce it themselves, speeding up the ripening process.