So, it has been well over a month since my green smoothie experiment began - it’s time to review.
It’s always unusually calming to work in threes; three recipes resulting and three realizations.
I may like stinky cheese, but I don’t like stinky drinks.
My water bottle still smells.
I don’t know what it is about crushing up veggies and greens, but by the time I got to work the first day with my green power, it had done something wrong to my water bottle. Now, I didn’t toss this beverage in an old water bottle, this was a legitimate BPA-free Nalgene container - but something permeated through that plastic and it wasn’t pretty.
I found myself doing the old plug your nose and chug ordeal - that’s an okay look when you’re 5 and being force-fed cough medicine OR in first year of university when some “friend” bought you the most disgusting shot at the bar…but not in your mid-20s when you’re trying to exude a cool, “look how healthy I am” façade in front of your colleagues.
Without an exorbitant amount of fruit, it‘s yucky.
This conclusion is a direct result of a kale mishap. I started my trials with a spinach/arugula blend for recipe #1 (see below); it was vibrant and light - okay this wasn‘t so bad. I used a mixture of peaches, pineapples and melon to balance out the earthiness of the greens.
Well, kale is not spinach and it will not be overshadowed by measly berries and juicy fruit. Kale is a soldier on the front lines for leafy greens. The bright green colour of my previous smoothies was long gone, and was replaced with a deep purple/brown hue resulting from a blueberry/kale mixture. Okay, well appearances can be deceiving, let’s give this a try.
I just have one thing to say - you should not have to chew a drink.
Apparently, kale does not blend as willingly as some of the lighter greens - it turned into this sludgy, chunky mess that tasted nothing like the hearty greens nor the sweet fruit that accompanied it. Smoothie fail.
If my smoothie must be mostly fruit to make it edible, then I’m just going to have a fruit smoothie and enjoy myself.
Am I the only one that is unsatisfied with a drink as a meal?
My reasoning behind jumping on the green smoothie train was to find something that was convenient, fast and filling to get me through those tough parts of the day. These mixtures are supposed to keep you from feeling hunger pains, from feeling that 3:00 p.m. drag and from those doughnuts that always seem to look much more appealing than the apple you threw in your lunchbag. Well, I tried the drinks in the morning, at noon and at night and can’t say I felt much of a difference. Subconsciously, I’m sure I felt better about myself for ingesting so many healthy ingredients all at once, but in reality it was still a drink and, apart from my chewy beverage experience mentioned above, I have concluded that I’d prefer to eat my meals rather than sip them.
I suppose if you truly have problems stabbing a fork into a bowl of salad or grabbing some carrot sticks, then the liquefied versions will offer a solution. But, otherwise, I think it’s a bunch of hooey. There is something instinctively satisfying about biting and chewing to refuel - having the blender chew my salad first just didn’t do it for me.
Conclusions: Just eat a salad and be done with it.
