Sunday, January 22, 2012

For beginners: What do you put in your smoothies?

In general people we come in contact with are always asking, “what’s in the smoothie today”?  From the beginning of our raw food lifestyle we rarely (I mean like 1-2 times a month) use recipes.  We simply buy healthy, reasonably priced raw foods and sometimes from other’s gardens (we don’t have our own . . . YET), then add what we feel would be good in that day’s smoothie.  Once you get going, it’s not very hard to learn what goes well with what.  A few staples we are always using are KALE, SPINACH, CHARD, COLLARD GREENS and various kinds of FROZEN FRUIT.  We typically buy a lot of our produce at Costco.  We’d like to work our way up to buying more “organic” and we do sometimes but it’s harder to get to and more expensive, often times it’s over double the cost.  

Considering we do make our own smoothies with our own “recipes”, meaning each day is a new recipe in a sense, we have made some bad tasting smoothies too.  This will happen once in awhile.  Everyone is different.  Even between the two of us we have personal preferences, but not drastically, so this is not a conflict between us.  Items we DON'T like to add are, broccoli and celery and sometimes bok choy becomes a little to much (for me specifically).  Alicia doesn’t like lemon as much as I do. 

So find what works best for you, either do what we do and just mess around with what you put in your smoothies at first (as long as there’s a good amount of greens) and you’ll find your place OR find recipe ideas in books or online.  There’s a lot of websites out there.  I will list a couple for you.

http://www.smoothie-handbook.com/index.html
http://www.smoothieweb.com/
http://www.incrediblesmoothies.com/smoothie-recipes/


Chose your future health carefully!!!!!!!       
                                                               
                               

Friday, January 13, 2012

Sharing our Health Experience

Our experience as we share the love of SMOOTHIES has been interesting. Unless you're already a green smoothie advocate, try to imagine yourself or someone you see almost everyday carrying a bottle of semi thick, unfamiliar green liquid. It’s not something you see very often.

My wife and I get funny looks and sometimes criticism for drinking our smoothies. People at our work now know us as the smoothie freaks, geeks, weirdo’s, health nuts, etc.. At first it was quit a surprise to us how people treated us because of our diet. You would think more people would be proud of someone who is trying to take care of their body, but maybe they really are. Not quit sure the psychology of it, but it might have something to do with jealousy or just simply being uneducated. It’s assuring to read from other “raw foodist” that experience similar things. There are some that applaud us though. It’s been fun to share smoothies with the people at our work. We both do it on occasion and some fun things have happened because of it.

The first time I shared my smoothie was with a 27 year old guy who isn’t terribly unhealthy but isn't very healthy either. I told him I would give him some of my smoothie the next day. So I made extra the next day and gave him about a cup. Later that day, he came up to me telling me how different it made him feel. He said it gave him energy and made him a little loopy. This I suspect was because his body was not used to that many nutrients (or maybe I secretly slipped him some poison). Then later on after the smoothie had passed through him, he said he urinated green, Ha Ha. I couldn’t believe it! Green colors have come out my other end which is intense enough, but not that end or front or how ever you say that. I continued to share my smoothie with him for a little while and he enjoyed and appreciated them.

Another time, there was a girl at my work that noticed that I was always drinking a green smoothie and I told her a little about it. She soon got a high performance blender with her husband and starting making green smoothies. They enjoy blending daily now and she tells me that I am a good influence on their health.