With Thanksgiving cleared, I have a short window for healthier eating until the (actual) Christmas season arrives and the gluttony resumes.

But that’s not the only reason I chose smoothies as this week’s subject. I have picked up a nasty cold, and I blame my otherwise adorable granddaughter, a (just turned) 3-year-old who attends preschool and is a super-carrier of everything. Someday I’m going to spend extended time with her and not get sick. That’s bound to happen, right? What stings even more is that, apart from the occasional cough, granddaughter was in the pink during the entire time she and her parents stayed with us.

Still and all, would I put up with a nasty cold to spend 10 quality days with her? Every. Single. Time.

So, smoothies. I’m a veritable rookie. I’ve had a a few homemade ones (made by others), but have no memory of ordering a smoothie from a purveyor of smoothies. That changes this week. Let’s hope they help my health.

I’ve chosen two locally based chains with shops near my home in St. Pete, another bonus for a man with a cold. The are: Grain & Berry, with 11 Bay area locations, and SOHO Juice Co., with two — the other in the South Howard section of Tampa (hence the name). I’ve chosen to go on back-to-back days, based on the assumption that to do so has better healing potential than drinking two smoothies in one day.

GRAIN & BERRY

I needed a sweatshirt when I headed out about 3pm on Tuesday. As one who lives for cold fronts, I should’ve loved it, but not so much with a nasty cold.

Grain & Berry, located in a relatively new strip center on 4th Street in St. Pete, has a tidy interior that doesn’t try too hard. It’s most noticeable feature is bananas. Bunches of bunches of bananas at various stages of ripeness decorate the front counter. There’s a smaller rack of bananas on the back wall. These bananas gave the mostly wood-grained room some color, but I wondered about them as an interior design choice.

I asked the helpful counter person, Mia, what the store’s most popular smoothie was, and although she couldn’t cite just one, we finally decided on the Magic Dragon ($8.74). My only regret — which didn’t occur to me until later — was that I ordered the one smoothie (of eight on the menu) that did not include banana.

Appearance

Almost certainly the first fuschia-colored beverage I’ve ever had. I was briefly mesmerized by its brightness. Radioactive, I wondered?

The color comes from the Magic Dragon’s primary ingredient, pitaya, or dragon fruit, which is lauded for its health properties. Because the fruit is tart, this smoothie uses peach, pineapple, orange juice, strawberries and almond milk to sweeten it.

Texture and Taste

The drink had the kind of organic sweetness that convinced me it was fully fruit-based. A hint of graininess furthered my conviction. Some of the dragon fruit’s tartness shone through, which added zip. The drink started out thick, but not so much that it was difficult to suck through a straw.

I took my time — drank some of it at G&B, some on the drive home, and finished it at the FFF Lab™, at which time it had incurred considerable meltage. In all, I found the Magic Dragon to be tasty, straightforward and easy to drink.

SOHO Juice Co.

At 2 p.m. Wednesday it was brisk and sunny, and I was more able to enjoy the weather — mostly because I was feeling somewhat better, which I attribute more to my nasty cold running its course than to the previous day’s smoothie. But I could be wrong.

SOHO Juice is located in a small shopping center at the clogged juncture of 4th Street North and 22nd Avenue. The functional space is clearly intended for primarily takeout business, although there are a few basic tables and chairs.

I had realized beforehand that matching up smoothies between these two chains would be tricky, so I ultimately decided to go with pitaya as the common ingredient. And that meant the Purple Haze ($9.99). It had a more elaborate set of ingredients than its counterpart, which I won’t list in full but will tell you that it included … banana.

Appearance

Bright purple, although not as bright as the prior day’s fuschia. And it was probably not the first purple beverage I’ve ever had, although at the moment I can’ t name one. It looked thicker than the Magic Dragon.

Texture and Taste

This one was foodier. Is that a word? It is now. I detected little bits of food in this smoothie, and could even taste the dates. So it required some mild chewing, whereas the smoothie at G&B did not.

These mini-morsels took some getting used to, but about halfway through I began to understand that I was not only drinking a smoothie, I was getting a meal. I checked back on the menu and darned if SOHO doesn’t call them “Meal Replacement Smoothies.”

The Purple Haze had no dominant flavor, and was kind of amorphous. The drink had an appropriate level of sweetness, but nothing tart or sour to add zing. Not surprisingly, this smoothie went down more slowly than the competition’s, with little discernible meltage.

And the Winner of the Smoothie Showdown Between Two Local Chains Is …

Grain & Berry.

I hasten to add that, more so than a lot of Food Fights, this one boiled down to a matter of preference, largely because I could not find a viable apples-to-apples comparison.

So, because I’m a babe in the smoothie woods, I went with the most basic criterion: Which one did I enjoy more?