Smoothies!!!

 I have decided that I do not eat enough fruit. I have strangely never been that in love with food, and have always preferred vegetables. It has always been a struggle to get myself to eat fruit...until my discovery of smoothies. I recently posted my fave smoothie recipe (an invention that I must credit to my mother) and since then I have become obsessed with making smoothies. It is soooo easy to cut up a bunch of fruit and throw it in a blender and VOILA, a beautiful, delicious, sweet drink, and it is oh so healthy. It is much easier for me to drink fruit than to eat it.

I have a lot of fun experimenting with different fruit and veggie combinations. Play around with whatever is in season and in-stock at your grocery store. I would try: apple, banana, strawberry, blueberry, peach, pineapple, mango, papaya, kiwi, orange, raspberry, blackberry, pear, watermelon (and all the different kinds of melons), lemon, cucumber, carrot, beet, celery, tomato, apricot, cranberry, nectarine, clementine, nuts, coconut, different seasonings and spices like cinnamon....the list goes on! Most combos will be great, and a few might be misses. Either way, drink it! It's good for you!

So, I bought this new book that has like a billion different smoothie and juice recipes as inspiration to create some new recipes of my own. I was pretty disappointed though because almost every single recipe had yogurt, milk, and honey. How unnecessary! Fruit is so sweet and delicious by itself that there is absolutely no need to add sweeteners to the mix. I was also upset by the use of a juice extractor. Every recipe said to run the ingredients through a juice extractor. What a waste!! You are not even getting the most nutritious parts of the fruits and vegetables. You are mostly getting sugar! I am so against juice extractors. There are hundreds of important nutrients and vitamins in fruits and vegetables that you can't get from just the juice. I fully support blending all fruits and vegetables smoothies in a blender, food processors, or smoothie-maker. Please do not throw out all that wasted fruit and vegetable! Eat it all! It's good for you!!

My only exception to this would be if you have some digestion issues. Drinking just the juice is a good if you don't think you can handle all the fruit and vegetables going into a smoothie. It might be too much for your stomach to digest, especially if you have a sensitive stomach. Also if you are new to smoothie-making this might be a good idea since your body may not be used to the amount of whole foods you are eating, smoothies are filling! Another idea would be to just half the recipes you are trying when you make them the first time.

But enough ranting, I will say that when I blended instead of extracted, many of the recipes came out absolutely delicious. My favorite smoothie recipe that I adapted from the new book I recently bought, 500 Smoothies and Juices, by Christine Watson, is called the Green Goddess. It combines celery, apple, pear, kiwi, spinach, cucumber, and lime. It is so yummy when blended instead of juicing. So get out there, and make yourself a smoothie!! It is one of the best and easiest things you can do for your body!