an interlude

while i’m impatiently waiting to receive all of your guesses on the last post (i’ll give you a little more time.  i know not everyone reads my blog every day.) i thought i’d tell you about my new favorite breakfast drink:  green smoothies!

so during a recent session of blog surfing, i ran across this post on happy foody that totally inspired me.  okay, really i just loved the awesome straw and the bright lovely green color of the finished smoothie, but for whatever reasons, i decided to try making one.  i mixed up apple cider, frozen bananas, frozen grapes, pineapple, a splash of apricot compote and a giant handful of spinach and this is the beauty that poured out of the blender.  i already had the cute straws (from target awhile back), but never had a good excuse to use them.  they are very thick plastic–rigid and dishwasher safe and they’re wide to accommodate a thick smoothie better.  plus… so cute!  but back to the smoothie itself–i worked for a summer during high school in a fresh juice shop.  it wasn’t one of those big chains like jamba or julius with their freaky pre-packaged powders and ice and sugar, no this was a small, local business that was about a block from my house in texas that made all of their smoothies only with fruit and occasionally maybe some yogurt or wheat germ.  every morning (early!) i’d hop over our back fence and walk to work where we spent about an hour juicing before we opened.  i made so many smoothies there that i’ve got a pretty good idea of what mix of frozen solids + liquids are needed and what you have to do to them in a blender to make them reach that sweet point where the liquids spin and a vortex opens down the middle of the blender–perfect.  still, we’d never put spinach in a smoothie at the shop and i wasn’t sure what to expect.  with all of that fruit, i knew it would be a little bit sweet, but wouldn’t the greenness of the spinach come through and overshadow the flavor a little?  just like all things that are “good for you” when snuck into things that actually taste good?  i was very pleasantly surprised to discover that i couldn’t taste the spinach at all.  and there was enough in there for a good-sized spinach salad.  and all i had to do was drink it with a cute straw?  don’t get me wrong.  i love a good spinach salad, but i usually have to add some sort of dressing.  this is just spinach and fruit!  although i will warn you that the addition of raspberries turns the green into more of a brown, swamp sludge look.  great for eight-year-old boys!

i also liked happy foody’s suggestion to drink it out of a glass jar.  this one used to hold spaghetti sauce.  i paid too much for the sauce just because i loved the jar.  i am such a sucker for packaging.  but hey, it’s getting re-used, so that’s a good thing, right?

maybe tomorrow i’ll tell you about my other new favorite breakfast food.  but then again, maybe i shouldn’t.  these are extremely dangerous to have in your house.  where you might eat them.  and mistakenly think they’re healthy because they’re called a “trail mix bar.”  oh wait.  are you supposed to eat this on a hike?  maybe that’s the secret….

p.s.  even if you don’t feel like guessing about the quilt (or if you’re exempted because you already know the story), you can still feel free to leave complimentary comments about the quilt itself on the blog–you don’t have to e-mail me!  :)