Wow, I've been meaning to add more reflections on the green smoothie cleanse, but life just keeps... well, you know, happening. I pretty much only get to reflect in the car, the kitchen, or the shower. And my laptop just isn't too handy in either of these places. But tonight the boy is asleep, the hubby is away, and I've got another night or two before freelance will take over my life again, so here I am.
(If you don't care about my rambling but do care for the recipe for my rich tasting superfood snackalicious smoothie, jump on down to the bottom of the post).
So I think what I was really hoping to get out of the weekend was some sort of noticeable health improvement. More specifically, my hands have been breaking out for a LONG while now, and nothing I do seems to help. I've got my cleaning regimen down to very few, all-natural ingredients, and the only soap I use is homemade, unscented, organic goats milk castile soap. Yet my hands still itch and crack and drive me crazy. So I was hoping that they would clear up some over the weekend and I'd be able to use that starting point to figure out a food that's doing it. No such luck.
In fact, from the second day of the cleanse and straight through the next 10 days or so while I was still having a smoothie a day, my throat was sore and weird. So if anything I've discovered that I'm INTOLERANT to something I was putting into smoothies... and with so many ingredients in them, it was impossible to figure out what was doing it.
So I have officially gotten off the green smoothie bandwagon for a while. Gotta slowly keep an eye on what I eat and figure out what's doing the throat stuff.
Zeke, on the other hand, is still rocking about 16-20 oz of smoothie a day. He loves it and I love that he loves it. I'm slowly modifying his recipe to get an optimal mix that doesn't break the bank, and isn't too sweet. For instance, I'm trying to cut down on how much blueberry goes into them, but it seems he won't drink them without blueberries. (In case you haven't noticed, blueberries aren't cheap!) And since likes to eat his bananas, I don't want to put another whole banana in his smoothie... I've been dropping about a cup of frozen organic spinach in each day's smoothie for the high calcium value. But again, that ain't cheap. So now I'm experimenting with adding two tbsp of hulled sesame seeds and chia seeds for their high calcium content. And since these are for Zeke and not me, the high fat value of the seeds isn't a problem at all... in fact, I'm always looking for ways to bulk this skinny minnie up a little bit. So the Zeke smoothie is still going strong.
I also realized that when I'm making smoothies, I basically put all the same food in it that I would eat in installments throughout my day as snacks (a banana, some greek yogurt with fruit and honey, some almonds... you get the picture). Only now they're all packed into my morning smoothie and it doesn't fill me up and so then I'm eating MORE food throughout the day. Not really what I'm going for. Plus it takes more prep time in the morning than just throwing those items whole into containers and taking them to work to much on slowly throughout my day.
So there you have it. I'm an oddball and smoothies don't work for me. However, I will say that I am kind of hooked on the not-quite-so-green dessert smoothie I came up with during the cleanse. It's a good alternative to ice cream or a chocolate bar when I need something chocolatey and sweet....
Kendra's Not-So-Green Superfood Smoothie
- 1 cup almond milk (preferably made from scratch)
- 2 tbsp raw cacao (not to be confused with cocoa)
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 4-5 sprigs of fresh mint (yummy yummy yummy!)
- 4 soaked dates (or 1 tbsp honey if you don't want to wait on soaking the dates)
- 2 dashes cinnamon
- 1 banana
- 1 tbsp almond butter
- (optionals: 1 tbsp almond butter, 1/2 zucchini, 1/2 cup decaf coffee)
While we're at it, Meghan's got a recipe for a chocolate pudding with a similar ingredient list.
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