My 5 Minute Morning Green Smoothie

As I've mused before, since getting back from South East Asia I've been slowly dragging my carcass into the realm of the living with being good about light yoga, upping my workload slowly, amongst other things.  Of course, none of that will do me much good if I'm not sweeping the steps of my body's temple with high fiber green vegetables! 

I have generally had a bit of a hard time with smoothies, finding there is either too much added sugar in the form of flavored non-dairy milks, agave, bananas, dates, etc. lacking in actual vegetable content aside from a cursory couple of de-stemmed kale leaves or dash of spirulina.  

The flipside is me going overboard and forgoing flavor in the name of "healthy," and end up chewing through a thick, fibrous, muddy beet, kale, cinnamon, acai, maca, almond, jalapeno, parsley, grapefruit sludgefest that tastes about as good as the dirt they're all grown in. 

Finally I seem to have found a tasty medium that tastes pretty damn good (For something so healthy), isn't packed full of freaky banana sugar (one banana has approximately 15 grams of sugar in it, thats a tablespoon!), is predominantly vegetable based.

Oh, also, it takes like less than 5 minutes to prepare (though a bit longer to thoughtfully sip as you review your various morning rages), as there is barely any prep involved beyond DUMPING STUFF IN TEH BLENDER!

So, what all goes into this?  Well, lets get onto the recipe below for that.

5 Minute (AMAZING) Green Smoothie
Makes 2-4 servings to fuel you, and maybe company, throughout the day.

• 1 large, organic cucumber, ends trimmed*, and cut into 3-5 chunks
• 1/2 a small bunch organic parsley or cilantro, stems included
• 1 mottled banana (the browner the skin, the less starchy), peeled and halved
• 2 organic kiwis, ends removed, and halved, skin on**
• 3-5 leaves organic kale, torn in half lengthwise
• 1 head organic romaine lettuce, bottom cut off and then cut into 3 or 4 sections
• 1 Organic apple, quartered (I use fuji, but any should work)
• 1 inch knob of ginger
• *optional* juice of 1 fresh lemon or fresh lime
• *optional* A dash of spirulina

Place about half of your ingredients into an uber blender (I use a BlendTec but Vitamix should work), add about 1 cup of water and pulse it a couple of times to create space for the rest of the ingredients.

When you have created space for the rest of the ingredients, load them in and pulverize (my blender has an automatic Whole Juice timed setting).  

If you can't fit _everything_ in (I can usually just eek everything in, sometimes barely), feel free to save it for the next day.  *I usually sacrifice half a cucumber if something needs to go.

From there, enjoy your breakfast! If you are flying solo, it should make enough juice to fill a couple of ball jars to give you some green boosters throughout the day.  Generally since I've gotten back, half of it has been my breakfast and I try to eat mindfully throughout the rest of the day.

**Yes, kiwi skins are edible and under appreciated!  Also as a nice touch, add the kiwis after the juice has been prepared, and blend it just a little more, this makes sure the black seeds are still whole and lend a nice crunch to the smoothie.

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Obviously this can be tailored to your personal preferences, but I've found that the lighter water heavy vegetables like romaine and cucumber really help give refreshing body to smoothie without making it too vegetal, overwhelming the qualities of the apple and kiwi.  The banana also really helps round out the body of the drink, as I learned one morning when I forgot to add said fruit and was wondering what the drink was missing... Speaking of missing, I'm all out of romaine... erk! 

Thai Kitchen Sink Soup

So a few weeks ago I went over "concept recipes." This is the soup version of that. Honestly I made this too long ago to really remember what I put in, but there will be an honest guess. The vegetable items in this soup are as much whatever I have kicking around my fridge that I want to use up as the broth is.

To make the liquid part of the soup I look through my fridge for one or two things to make it 'rich,' like creamy, and one or two things to give it flavor.

For the vegetables I see what I have, shred, dice and chop.

Rich items could include: nut butters, particularly almond and cashew (but also peanut, macadamia nut, tahini, etc.), coconut milk, and/or mushrooms. I usually do this when I have a near-empty jar of some sort of butter I need to use up, a half can of coconut milk, potatoes, squash, etc.

Flavor items are usually some sort of paste made for soup or sauces: Miso (sweet, dark red, whatever I have), tom yum, thai curries (like red, masaman, yellow), garam masala, chunky chat, indian curry powder, etc.

I usually toss in a couple cloves of garlic, ginger, a vegetable stock cube (or better than bullion paste), salt, braggs liquid aminos, sesame oil, soaked kombu (kelp), red pepper flakes, black pepper, other spices... all depends on the flavor I am going for.

All of this goes into the blender, with some water, and I blend until smooth. Some combos work better than others, IE almond butter + thai curries work very well. Miso + kombu + sesame oil = good. I then pour it into a sauce pan on the stove and heat it up.

Meanwhile, I prepare whatever vegetables I have into the number of bowls I am using. In this case I shredded some carrots and daikon, ripped up some basil leaves, and slices some scallions and put them in a bowl. Other good veggies included shredded zucchini, roasted root vegetables, thinly sliced onions, spinach, carrots... You can also toss leftover cooked grains/beans in as well, such as rice, quinoa, chickpeas, etc.

When the soup is ready (re: boiling), I pour it over the ingredients, into the bowl. The vegetables are blanched, and keep their flavor/are not over-cooked. The infusion of basil adds a great kick when cooking more thai-style soups.