My favorite smoothie of the week:

1 grapefruit, 2 small oranges, 2 leaves of kale (stems removed), 1 carrot (peeled), 1 frozen banana and 1 tsp flax seeds

This smoothie concoction peps me up more than coffee ever could.  It also keeps me full for several hours.  It makes quite a bit, probably enough for 2 servings, so I have half first thing in the morning and the other half mid-morning.  It really is much better than I’m guessing you’re imagining it is right about now.  I’ve also made some tasty smoothies using zucchini, which will be on the menu again tomorrow morning.

Seriously, can you think of a better way to start your day?  And a smoothie can be made in no time at all– certainly much quicker than making a pot of coffee.  Throw this together in the morning and drink it on your way to work.  Try it just once and I know you’ll be as addicted as I am.

Matt and I like to have margaritas occasionally.   A vacation in a glass, they make us think of our trip to Mexico .  Needing some R&R, we decided to have one this weekend and it totally scratched our vacation itch… at least for a minute or two.  So here you have it, my simplified version of a margarita.

“So Refreshing You’ll Think You’re Sitting On the Beach In Mexico” Margaritas

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1 1/2 oz. tequila

1/2 oz. Cointreau

1 oz. fresh lime juice

1/2 oz. agave

Throw everything into a shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously for a few seconds.  Pour into a glass filled with ice.  OR blend it all up in the blender.  Either way you make it, I know it’ll hit the spot.

I don’t know what happened, but I totally got out of the habit of enjoying fresh juice for breakfast.  *sigh*  As I’ve posted about before, I brought home oodles of citrus from my Dad’s trees and I thought I’d get some good juice out of them this morning.  I also had some broccoli in the fridge that I’ve intended to have for dinner the last several nights, but never got around to it.

+  = 

I used 4 small carrots, a bunch of broccoli with stems, 1 apple, and 2 grapefruit.  It’s amazing how filling this juice is!  And this is a neat tip (thanks, Dad, for telling me about it).  Put a plastic produce bag around the shoot and inside the collection bin of your juicer.  It catches all of the bits that sometimes fly out the back and all you have to do for cleanup is toss out the bag.  Voila!

I can’t say that we feasted on anything Irish, but we did start our day with green pancakes.  Nothing spectacular here… just used the pancake recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking (my favorite!) and added a few drops of green. I tried at first to use my natural food coloring (made from concentrated vegetable dyes), but it really didn’t work too well. I think I may invest in the paste colors and see if those work better than the liquid.

In addition to being St. Patrick’s Day, it was also Tuesday Party for us.  We had it at our house this time and I made the very Irish dish of falafel.  At least the falafel balls were green– that’s somewhat festive, I guess.

My Dad’s lemon and grapefruit trees are exploding with fruit and I brought home about 70 pounds of citrus from this passed weekend’s visit, so I made some strawberry lemonade.  I found it to be a little too sweet at first, but added in a little more lemon juice and it was tasty.  I used frozen strawberries in place of fresh and plain water in place of sparkling.  Very good with a little tequila!

And for dessert, I made a German Apple Cake (from The Joy of Vegan Baking).  It was really, really good.

I picked up this book, The Juicing Bible, at the library yesterday because I’ve become obsessed with juicing.  This book is fantastic because the entire first part of it is filled with concoctions that can treat or alleviate any illness or condition you can think of.  Literally, any condition.  Infertility, pregnancy, IBS, sinusitis, etc.   While I have not yet tried any of the recipes in it, I can tell that this would be a useful book to have in my home library.  I’m also impressed with the smoothie and tea recipes.

I used to be scared of vegetable juice– probably because my parents both like V8 and I can’t think of anyting more repulsive– but I’m not scared any more.  In an effort to increase my consumption of raw foods, I’ve decided that a big jug of fresh juice is the best way to start my day.  Yesterday, I didn’t have many fruits or veggies on hand, so I went with a very simple carrot, apple, ginger, strawberry juice.  I made about 2 cups and had that for breakfast with nothing else.  Around 10:30, I had a few raw almonds.  Then I had lunch at about 1, which was probably a little long to wait because I was super hungry but we were out running errands.

Today, I’m enjoying a quart of celery, carrot, red kale, beet green, strawberry, pineapple, blueberry, tangerine juice.  The tangerine was a last minute thing because I was trying to sweeten up a little bit of the original concoction so that Emma would drink it.  My mistake was juicing the peel and all because it gave it an intense orange flavor with a slightly bitter aftertaste in the little cup that she had.  She handed it back and told me that she doesn’t like “that tamborine juice.”  Tomorrow I will probably make the same thing, but just add the whole “tamborine” without all the other fruits.

My next major kitchen purchase will probably be a better juicer.  Mine is an old hand-me-down from my mom and while it works decently for hard stuff, it really has a problem with leaves.  It’s disappointing that a huge pile of greens amounts to less than 1/4 cup of juice when the pulp is still pretty wet.  I think my dream juicer is this Omega Juicer. It’s funny the things that I get excited about these days. A few years ago, I may have been drooling over a nice pair of shoes, but these days, I go crazy for kitchen gadgets.

Check out these babies from my Dad’s tree:

I don’t know what variety they are, but these are pretty sweet for grapefruit.  Emma loves them, especially when we juice them like we did today.  We only had these three and it didn’t yield a ton of juice, but it was just enough for the two of us to have a few swigs.  I sweetened it up ever so slightly with a little agave nectar.  Yum!

Yesterday, I made some carrot apple juice for breakfast and that was all I had until lunch.  Today, I had my grapefruit juice with my usual toast.  Strange as it may sound, I was hungrier sooner today after eating toast than I was yesterday with just having juice.  Hmmm… tomorrow will be another experiment.  I’ll make some more carrot apple juice and just have that for breakfast to see if I can make it to lunch without wanting to eat my arm.

One of these days, I will invest in a fancy juicer that can handle greens, since I am really getting into fresh juices.  It’s so nice to make myself (and Emma) a fresh batch of juice in the morning.

We’re spending a couple of days hanging out with my dad since my mom went away on vacation with her art friends.  They have this enormous lemon tree in their backyard, and even though most of the lemons are sort of green, we managed to find enough yellow ones to make some lemonade.  And it was darn tasty!

Lemonade

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2 cups fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 cup sugar

6 cups water, divided

In a microwave safe pitcher or bowl, dissolve the sugar in one cup of the water in the microwave.  To do this, heat for 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between each, until the sugar is fully dissolved.  Combine all of the ingredients and taste, as you may need more sugar depending on how tart the lemons are.

Awesome lemonade add-ins: strawberry or raspberry puree, mint leaves, lavendar.  Yes, lavendar is FANTASTIC in lemonde– crush it up in the lemonade as you would mint and strain.