Green Smoothie

When I started eating more natural/less processed food I started making green smoothies for breakfast.

Green smoothies are a fruit smoothie with green leaves added. Don't be put off by the green colour, it really tastes so fresh and fruity and clean. It feels good for you, in a nice way :).

The craziest thing was that I had been drinking them for a few weeks but didn't mention them to anyone (as most people think they are a bit crazy) - then within a few days last week two different people mention to me that they were making them. Maybe there is a green smoothie movement happening :)





There are lots of combinations you can make - any fruit you like and any greens, add some water and blend it up. My local Harris Farm green grocer has small buckets of fruit that are slightly bruised at a cheap price. I buy whatever is available in the buckets each week. Luckily at the moment there are always mangoes in the buckets, which are so yummy in green smoothies.

My favourite recipe is;
2 oranges peeled and chopped up
1 small mango peeled and chopped
a handful of baby spinach
Pop in a blended and then add in about 1 cup water to blend up.

This makes about 500ml, I drink it in the car on my way to work. Yum.

I've added a video of Sara from Walk Slowly, Live Widly making a green smoothie.

How To Make a Green Smoothie from Sara Janssen on Vimeo.


(Photo credit)

Real Eating

This year I've been eating better, more healthily. And my body is defiantly thanking me for it.

But the last few weeks I've been researching different types of food we can eat and how they affect our body. In particular how processed food can affect our mood and health.

I've been thinking that I may have been eating healthily, but maybe not nutritionally.

The last two weeks I've been trying to eat mainly plant based, whole foods. Some guidelines for myself are

• Each meal has a plant based element to it.
• Either fruit or vegetables (or both!) which make up the majority of the meal.
• If there are grains, they are whole grain (unbleached and as unprocessed as possible).
• Only eating processed foods that have 5 or less ingredients and that have real foods as part of the ingredients (e.g. swapping bread that has flavour enhancers and random numbers in the ingredient list for a bread that is made of wholemeal flour, yeast, oil and salt)
• limiting meat to only one meal a day, or less (and it's whole meat, not processed)

I defiantly notice a difference. The biggest difference is that I'm sleeping better, and actually feeling rested when I wake up. My mood is improving a bit, but it's really hard to gauge. The weirdest difference is that when I do eat a meal that is all processed (like grabbing take away on the way home, or eating one of the freezer meals I had left over) a few hours after I eat it I feel queasy and unwell for a bit. When I feel this way I can go - "Oh yeah, I ate that didn't I? Opps."

I'm interested in seeing how this goes.
I know these ideas can seem a bit extreem - but I'm willing to try it out to see if it helps me lead a better quality of life, and I figure it can't hurt. These are some of the resources I've been reading.
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
100days of real food
Green Smoothie Girl/12 Steps to Whole Food

I can garentee I won't ever get fanatical about it - it's more a case of eating as well as I can for the majority of the time and not worrying about little things now and then. And, as yet, I haven't given up my diet coke :).

Healthy Hospitality

At Equip Mum went to an elective on Hospitality – I decided to get double for my Money and read her notes. It looked like the hospitality seminar was really good, not just a reminder about why we should offer hospitality, but also practical tips.

One note that struck me in the booklet, was a reminder to cook healthy, low fat meals when having people over – the idea being that if you offer hospitality as often as you should then you could easily put weight on if you aren’t be careful about the food you serve. And it reminds you not to put off hospitality if you are trying to lose weight.

I have been trying to be a lot healthier in the last few weeks, but often when I have people over I think of it as a ‘free’ meal. But that’s not a good attitude to have.
Also I realised that if you serve up a healthy meal you are doing a double service to people you have over. If the people you have over are trying to lose weight they don’t have to feel bad about eating at your place.

So I’ve been thinking about how to have healthy hospitality, and here are my thoughts.

- Instead of having chips out to begin with, have chopped veggies and rice crackers and a low fat dip.

- It’s a good idea to have the meal self serve; it means you can control your portion size without making a big deal about it. If other guests want to eat less they can as well. (And the guys with huge appetites can fill up their plates)

- Have a huge green salad on the table; you can fill up your plate from that.

- Grill wherever possible – chicken, steak, kebabs are all good low fat options which can be easily cooked on mass.

- In the cooler months have a huge soup which is low fat; home made pumpkin or minestrone are good ideas.
Or make a casserole with heaps of veggies, and with both the casserole and pasta/rice self serve you can fill up on the veggies and have less of the carbs.

- Desert is tricky, but after a nice meal you don’t have to have anything big. Consider a nice fruit salad or a fruit crumble with a small scoop of low fat ice cream.

Do you have any other ideas for healthy hospitality?

You say tomatoe

Something I have been meaning to do for ages is grow a little veggie garden on our balcony.

I finally got around to starting it and so far it's going great.

I've got a pot of tomatoes.

If you look closely one is going red and should be ready to eat any day now. :) yum

I also have a pot with rosemary, capsicum and coriander.

I'm all inspired from my recent success, but not sure what else will grow well in pots. Any ideas?

The year of the Mango incident

(This is part of an ongoing series chronicling memories of my life growing up as a missionary kid in Vanuatu. For links to previous posts you can go here)

Every second year the mango trees flower. And Vanuatu is covered with mangos.

There are mangos every year in summer, but for some reason every second year there are 10 times the amount there are on the other year.
The year we first arrived was a mango year. And because the month that the mangos flowered was unseasonably dry, there were even more mangos than usual. (Wet weather when the mangos flower knocks most of the flowers off so there are fewer mangos).

There were mangos everywhere! Mangos in the trees, mangos rotting on the ground and baskets of mangos always appearing at our back door.

I had never tasted a mango before this; they are too expensive in Australia to be ‘wasted’ on little kidsJ. But that year I discovered just how good they were. Sweet and juicy, I loved to eat them. Dad would cut the mangos on either side of the seed, and score it so we could bite off cubes of sweet yellow flesh. Then I would suck the seed with juice running down my arms. One day I ate about 10.

That night I got really sick. I was sick for about a week and spent a few days in the local hospital. I had some kind of bug that had nothing to do with the mangos, but it has taken until now (almost 16 years later) before I could eat a mango again.

(Just a side note, Mango trees make great trees for climbing and building tree houses in)

(Photo courtesy of robert and fabienne)