Tomorrow’s Green Smoothie

Some people have been asking me recently about my breakfast green smoothie, what I put in it and so forth. I thought it was time for a little explanation.

Well, the thing about green smoothies is that they contain a lot of greens. What’s so great about that? Well, green leafy vegetables are an amazing low calorie food, high in fibre, anti-oxidents and phytonutrients. If you take a look at the ANDI chart, you’ll see that green leafy vegetables are at the highest end of the spectrum. We ALL need to be eating green leafy vegetables in abundance, but the problem is, people aren’t.

It comes down to time, convenience, habits and taste.  If I were to sit down and eat my way through the same amount of greens that I put in my smoothie, frankly, I’d be chewing for about an hour and I would probably have to smoother it with a high cal dressing in order to make it palatable. Who’s got the  time and the tastebuds for that? Not many people and that probably explains why our consumption of these health giving leafies is at an all time low.

Green smoothies are an answer to this problem. Blend them and drink them up. Eat greens without chewing, and you know what? you can’t even taste the greens. Kids won’t eat greens? Put them in a smoothie. They’ll lap ’em up.

So now it is 9pm. I have just prepared my smoothie ingredients for tomorrow. I get all them together and throw it in the blender and throw that in the fridge until tomorrow morning. In the AM, I’ll blend up my ingredients with some water and ice. It makes about 2 litres. I’ll consume half then and take the rest in one of my stainless steel drink bottles and sip it as I am sitting at my computer at school.

OK.. So here is tomorrow’s smoothie. This is a really big plate BTW. Here we have spinach, 2 bananas, ripe papaya, some scraggily mint I had floating around at the bottom of the fridge, stevia powder, 2 dates and some flaxseed. I vary up my greens using a few different types each week so I get a big variety and then I use whatever fruit I have on hand. Be warned, these are addictive. Once you get in to the green smoothie habit, you will seriously miss them when you can’t have them.

Want more information about green smoothies? Google it. There’s loads of stuff out there.

Tempeh Bacon

Yesterday, I went to Anotai, so I was able to stock up on some tempeh. I hadn’t had tempeh bacon for ages, so I thought I’d rustle up a batch.

Cookbook: The Vegan Table. You can also see a video demonstration of this exact recipe here. There are many recipes on line.

Ease of preparation: 5 out of 5

Accessibility of ingredients: 2 out of 5. Tempeh is hard to find here in Bangkok. You need a bit of perseverance and dedication. If you have access to a good health food shop, or something like Whole Foods you should be fine. Liquid smoke might be a challenge. Look near the BBQ sauces.

Taste: 5 out of 5, if you like tempeh. If you don’t then you probably won’t like it. Seb didn’t like it. He’s a bit weird about tempeh at the moment. I hope he’ll start to like it again. It is a great intro recipe to learn about tempeh.

Comments: I served this with banana and pecan pancakes which we served with maple syrup.

My Favourite Breakfast Right Now.

1 fresh young coconut and water
Half a pineapple
1 tablespoon of flaxseed
Half a bunch of spinach
A few cubes of ice
(A stoned date, although today I’d run out)

Blended!

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