TROPICAL GREEN SMOOTHIE

 

 

Things I currently love: my crock pot, a smooth schedule, a good book, and green smoothies.

 

I feel that this is the time of year when it gets hard being a mom. Activities are starting up, Valentine's need to be signed, it's still cold and dark early, and everyone is getting a little stir crazy from being inside the house. All. Of. The. Time. We've had a lot of evening activities lately which can easily wide up with lots of convenience in the form of dinner: meaning we've ordered a lot of pizza and had some nights at the drive-thru lately. Which then results in feeling...a bit blah. How to remedy this? Green Smoothies.

 

 

If you're on Pinterest (and let's be honest, you are) you know that there are about 4782974 million recipes out there for smoothies.  I absolutely love this formula chart from Simple Green Smoothies:

 



credit: Simple Green Smoothies

 

 

I toss my choices into my Vitamix and am ready for the day. (I love taking smoothies to work for lunch.)

My current favorite is a tropical tasting smoothie packed with sweet pineapple and my boyfriend, coconut milk. It's a burst of sunshine on these cold winter days.

(Not really. It's just a smoothie, not a miracle. But it does taste yummy.)

 

Tropical Green Smoothie

Ingredients:

2 cups of spinach
2 cups of coconut milk (1 can, shake well)
2 cups of pineapple
1 cut up banana (frozen or fresh)
3-5 ice cubes

Toss all of the ingredients into a blender and whirl to your heart's desire. Makes 2!

OLD FASHIONED

I feel that I've been in a whirlwind the past two (maybe three) months. There have been obligations and get-togethers and paper work and orders from the shop. My cell phone is ringing and beeping with text messages and my email inbox is always full.

Mothersdaybirthdaysanniversarylastdayofschoolfathersday. A lot.

A couple weeks ago, we went on a short family vacation to San Diego. And we went to the beach. I was looking forward to the crashing of waves and sand in my hair and warm sunshine and my kids in swimsuits. To relaxing and being away from it all. And then we got there, and I was surrounded by cellphones. EVERYONE was on their phone. Texting. Listening to music. Taking photos. "I have to tweet that!" I felt like all these people were at the beach, but they weren't even there. It was terribly overwhelming and exhausting to watch.

I write on this blog and am on facebook and twitter and instagram and pinterest and own a smartphone. I have an online shop on Etsy. I read several blogs that I find inspirational and waste a lot of time reading online celebrity gossip. It feels silly, ridiculous even, for me to complain that there is too much technology out there. But when I look at people texting and taking photos of their food and tweeting about the restaurant they're at in the middle of dinner, when they're talking on the phone and can't be bothered to speak to the person at the register at Target, I get a very old fashioned feeling that I just don't understand the world today. Twerking? Why would you feel the need to do that?

So I took a break.

I figured out some things. Like I need to read less online celebrity gossip and not feel I must read a text immediately. That sometimes, if I don't take my phone while I run to the grocery store, that doesn't mean I'm going to miss the call of a lifetime. And if I do, I can call them back. I don't need a typewriter, and it's okay to like and use the internet. But not every minute of everyday. That it's okay that I'm a little old fashioned in a modern world.

Cheers to an old fashioned life with a modern touch.

Fizzy Old Fashioned

from Cooking Light

Ingredients:
3/4 cup bourbon
3 tbsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/4 tsp. bitters
2 cups San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa blood orange soda

Mix first three ingredients together in a small pitcher. Add blood orange soda just before serving. Makes 2 (very) generous servings, or 4 normal servings.

Enjoy!