Discovering Smoothie Land

I have a friend who I love with all my heart.  She’s a vegan, I’m a carnivore.  She is beautiful, I’m lookin’ kinda haggard.  She has the most beautiful skin and hair and could easily pass for 30.  My skin looks like the underneath side of an old, well-used saddle.  My hair is where they got the style for troll dolls.

This is me.

She eats green smoothies and whole foods.  I ate pizza and burgers and tacos.  Oh, for the love of tacos!  She goes on long hikes every week.  I…well…I don’t.  She loved me enough to try to convince me there is a better way to eat and get healthy.  So, she gently introduced me to the smoothie.  Not just any smoothie, mind you.  Green smoothies.  Fortunately, she explained that “green” just means fresh, whole fruits and vegetables.  She invited me to her house one day to taste test the breakfast smoothie she fixes every day.  It was a beautiful vibrant red color, so that made it appear tasty.  I took the tiniest taste that barely moistened my lips.  I just couldn’t get the word “green” out of my head.  It’s a well-known fact that we “eat with our eyes” first.  If it doesn’t look good, we probably won’t even try it.  So the hook was set with that beautiful red color.  To my complete surprise, the smoothie was delicious!  Then she told me what was in it.  Had she told me what was in it before I tasted it, we probably would have gone no further.  It was the raw beets that gave it the color.  Visually, and well, even the taste, belied the fact that it also contained spinach, kale, celery, bananas and strawberries.  And this weird stuff called chia seeds.  She said it’s the same stuff used on those Chia Heads and Chia Pets you see on tv.

“You can eat that stuff?”  I can’t even describe the sideways scowl she gave me.  I could see I had much to learn.  She didn’t have a recipe, but she rattled off the ingredients she usually uses and I tried hard to remember.  The measurements were basically a little of this, a little of that, and a fistful of leafy greens.  With my head spinning and her directions a blur in my mind, I spent a whole bunch of money on stuff I thought I was supposed to get.  I started tossing stuff in my blender, confident I would end up with a glass full of deliciousness just like what she had served up.  I stared in disbelief into the depths of a very tall glass of what looked like dark green swamp sludge.  Yes, I put beets in it, but it was certainly not that beautiful red color.  Terror washed over me as I picked up the glass, determined not to waste $75.00 in fresh produce and very expensive chia and flax seeds.  It was so thick I thought I’d have to slice it, but after I added half a bin of ice, it was sorta liquidy.  I choked it down, literally.  It was absolutely the nastiest stuff I had ever consumed.  I seriously considered if it was worth having baby-smooth skin and thick, shiny hair.  This nasty stuff?  Twice a day? I don’t think so.

So, I went on an internet search and, miracle of miracles, I found a site called “Incredible Smoothies” (http://www.incrediblesmoothies.com/) and my courage was renewed.  This gal offered a 21-Day Smoothie Boot Camp with recipes!  I joined up and fell in love.  The Boot Camp came and went, and my heart was broken when it came to and end.  I follow her site faithfully and she always has wonderful recipes to add to my repertoire, and I’ve even figured out how to concoct my own!  Those are the kinds of things I plan to share with you here.

Stand by for the first couple of smoothie recipes I’ve created and have very cleverly dubbed “My Own Creations”.  I hope you enjoy.