A Green Day

Along with the usual resolutions I make every year (lose weight, get in shape), this year I have resolved to eat more veggies. A part of that is my new obsession with Green Drinks or Green Smoothies. I have been going back and forth between a REALLY green drink by Dr Oz and a more fruity and reasonable Green Smoothie concept. The Dr Oz green drink is actually pretty good - Oprah described it as "fresh" and I can say that I see what she is saying, as it mostly tastes like parsley and lemon, but it's REALLY green.

a mostly Dr Oz green drink

Here's how I make it:
1/2 apple
1/3 cucumber
1 rib celery
nub of ginger
1/2 lemon
1/2 lime
handfull of parsley
big handfull of spinach
2T chia seeds

Blend together until smooth. Serves 1.

I'm using a Magic Bullet for my blender so this turns out pretty crunchy - oh how I want a VitaMix!!!

Now the other type of smoothies I make are based out of an iBook called 40 Days of Green Smoothies by Becky Striepe. Makes me think of lent or something but the idea is to start out not so green and end up really green by the end of the book. I'm using it mainly as a formula - 1 c almond milk, 2T flax seed or chia, 1/4c frozen fruit, frozen banana. There are also variations that use peanut butter or cocoa powder - like dessert! There also is a suggestion to use avocado instead of banana, which I tried - BLEH. I wouldn't recommend it.

today's green smoothie

Today's smoothie
1c almond milk
1 frozen banana
1/4 c frozen raspberries
1T PB2 (powdered peanut butter)
4 green ice cubes

Blend until smooth. And to all you nay-sayers out there, this smoothie tasted mostly like peanut butter, no 'green' taste at all.

Now I know what you are thinking...a) that smoothie looks more brown than green, well it depends on what kind of greens you put in your smoothie. The cubes I put in were mostly mixed spring greens so there's some purple to muddy up the color (also weirdly, when the smoothie melted a bit and I drank it at work, it looked more green) and b) what the heck are green ice cubes?

Well...this is something I saw on Pinterest and it is an awesome idea!! You take greens that are on the edge of going bad and blend them up with water, put them in ice cube trays and freeze. Genius!!

green ice cubes

I blended most of 2 big containers (think Costco size) of spinach and spring mix. That gave me 4 trays worth of cubes. So much easier and my smoothies are colder. Love it.

For lunch I had a lovely salad with poached chicken, yummy!

Now on to dinner - this is a great recipe that would fit in the 15 minute or less meal category.

pot sticker soup

 Now the nice thing about having poached chicken in your lunch means you have home made chicken stock. Being home made, this stock has lots of flavor and not a lot of fat - firstly because I was poaching boneless skinless chicken breasts and secondly you can let the stock sit in the fridge and the fat congeals on the top of the container.

home made chicken stock

You just take a spoon and take the fat off. Nice flavorful broth. To make the base for this soup more of the Asian persuasion, I added a few big hunks of ginger, many garlic cloves, a splash or two of ponzu (soy sauce with lemon, you could just use soy sauce), a splash or two of worcestershire sauce (did you know the base is anchovy? It adds a nice briney-ness, you could also use fish sauce, I just don't have any), and a small splash (less than a tsp) of sesame oil. Bring to a boil. To be true to my veggie resolution, I added kale and shredded carrot once the broth started to boil. I cooked that for about 5 minutes. Then added my pot stickers. I used the ones from Trader Joe's. According to the package directions, you boil for 3 minutes or until soft. At the end, I squeezed 1/2 a lime. Yum yum yum. The soup was so hearty I needed a fork! Pretty low in calories, lots of volume to fill you up and true to my resolution, veggies.

As an aside, I LOVE Trader Joe's. It really is a shame I have to drive 1.5 hours to State College, PA to get to a Trader Joe's. Sad, but I will do it...as soon as my freezer empties.