December 10: Drink Your Apple-A-Day

This is my 344th post of 2010. 21 days left. Suffice it to say, coming up with fresh topics at this point in the year can be quite challenging. Often times, I won't have a clue what to write about and by simply overhearing a conversation amongst friends at work, I am able to expand on my idea enough to pound out an entire post.

This, in turn, can have negative consequences because of my sarcastic and sometimes-demeaning way of writing. I can't tell you how many times the people I had overheard the previous day have approached me wondering if the latest post was about them. If you're reading this right now thinking that I could be talking about you, I am. And this post isn't about you either, but it was your Facebook status update that gave me the idea for today's post.

In the summer of 2005, I forked over four hundred dollars and bought myself a blender. No, it's not a VitaMix, but the guy at the San Diego Country Fair was so convincing that it was better than a VitaMix, that I had to have one. I won't go into the details of how it compares to its rival in the blending industry, but I will tell you that I have pretty much gotten my money's worth. $400 worth of smoothies, sauces, ice creams, and milkshakes? Yup.

I am a smoothie fanatic. Martinelli's slogan is, "Drink your apple-a-day" and for five years now, I have literally been drinking my apples, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, grapes, cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, mangoes, limes, kiwis, oranges, and grapefruits with the help of my trusty blender. I've become an expert at combining just the right amount of high-water fruits with the more solid fruits. I've learned that if you throw in too much variety, the smoothies will all taste the same.

Once I had grown tired of experimenting with fruits, I moved on to vegetables. I knew I wasn't getting enough vegetables in my daily diet and it was because I didn't really know how to prepare them. I thought that by throwing them all into a blender, I could get the same nutritional value and I wouldn't have to waste so much time prepping them; bad idea. Drinking a frothy spinach, carrot, tomato, and cucumber beverage is extremely difficult to do. The problem then, was that I now had all of these vegetables taking up space in the refrigerator. I had to have at least three or four more smoothies so they wouldn't go to waste.

I thought that I might be missing some key ingredients when making a vegetable smoothie so I asked for 1-2-3 Smoothies for Christmas. It's a book of more than a hundred smoothie recipes and it was recommended by the makers of my blender. How could I go wrong?

Apparently, their answer was to add tofu and barley or almond milk (my choice!). I thought a smoothie with a main ingredient of spinach leaves was bad. Everything from the consistency to the taste was terrible. I had never not been able to finish one of my creations until then. I got through five or six gagging gulps and I had to quit.

I've gone through fifteen or so recipes from the book and they're all pretty bland at the very best. If you're looking for the perfect smoothie, my recommendation is this: Twelve ounces of raspberry juice, two scoops of orange sherbet, one frozen banana, five frozen strawberries, and a one to two scoops of ice. It's the Razzmatazz from Jamba Juice. It's not as healthy as a tofu and spinach smoothie with almond milk, but it's light years ahead in enjoyability.

I still love my blender and I use it all the time. I once had a roommate that commented on missing the paper plates of frozen banana chunks that I always had in stock when we lived together and that's exactly how my refrigerator/freezer still looks to this day. I hate cooking and I don't have any desire to learn how to improve. When I want my vitamins and nutrients, it's just easier to use my Blendtec Champ H3 10-speed blender.