Thursday, April 01, 2010

Just a smoothie

I don’t drink smoothies in the fall & winter. Smoothies are a warm weather drink, like milkshakes and ice cream. Except of course for random weather induced Blizzard cravings and really…54 inches of snow in 2 weeks…I deserved a DQ Blizzard.

But it’s spring now and I’ve been in the mood for smoothies. They make lunch so much easier for me when there are no leftovers. They keep me from making pepperoni rolls. They are sweet and if I add protein powder are nutritionally rounded.

Several of us were talking about smoothies we like to make the other day. I said something along the lines of “lately I go with mango, frozen berries, V8 Frusion and some yogurt”

I had the least amount of adjectives of anyone in the group, having a total of only 1 adjective – frozen.

Everyone else’s smoothies were full of adjectives – organic, local, homegrown, homemade, hand juiced, farmer’s market, in season, fresh, high protein and popular buzz words – Greek yogurt, flax meal, spinach flakes. Like it was a contest to see how many ways you could describe your smoothie.

Thank goodness I specified the types of fruit. If I hadn’t I think they would have assumed I drank some fruit flavored, dairy based beverage with high fructose corn syrup that I bought at Wal Mart.

From the intent way these people described their smoothies I’m guessing there is a point system for adjectives in use and whoever scores the most points wins the Food Smugness Crown for that round.

The point system probably looks something like this

Fresh 0 (it’s way too common for things to be fresh)

Frozen 0 (if pre-packaged but organic), –1 (if prepackaged & not organic), +1 (If you frozen it yourself)

Local +1 (how do you define local anyway? 20 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles? To me, ‘local’ means a place I drive around on a regular basis. I don’t regularly drive 100 miles anywhere, so my local range is about 30 miles. But I’ve heard good arguments for the 100 mile local range)

In season +1

Out of season –1

Non-local 0 or –1 (depending on if it is shipped from another country)

Organic +1 (lets not even go into those rules)

Artisanal +1

Goat milk +1

Raw milk +2

Green juice +2 (this is usually made with greens like kale, spinach & collards)

From your garden +5 (and you can add an additional +1 if is an unusual garden, like a hydroponic one, or a balcony garden with those upside down tomato plants, or if you have devoted half your kitchen counter space to an indoor herb garden)

From local U-pick orchard +3

From farmers market +2

From locally owned small store +1

From grocery store 0

From Wal Mart –10

Homemade +1

Home juiced +3

Small business bottled juice +1

Corporate bottled juice –1

Corporate ‘fruit flavored beverage’ –5

Containing HFCS -10

Using white sugar – 5

Using raw sugar –1

Using honey 0

Using agave nectar or stevia +2

Using currently trendy ingredients like agave nectar, Greek yogurt, flax meal or quinoa is an additional +1 hipness point for each

Increasing the fiber content +1

Increasing the protein content +1

Increasing the fat content –3

Now, with this point chart in mind, let’s analyze my smoothie.

DSC_9502

Mango – in season, but not organic and sourced from outside the USA, bought in a grocery store 0

Strawberries – out of season, not organic, sourced from the midwest, bought in a grocery store –1

Frozen blackberries – from a local U pick farm (just inside my 30 mile limit) and frozen by me. Come to think of it, some of those berries are from the bushes in my yard! Though I did not deliberately cultivate them. So +1 local, +1 my freezing, +3 U-pick farm & call it +1 for home grown since it wasn’t deliberate Total +6

Greek yogurt- to increase the protein content, from a store bought container +2

Honey – from a guy DH works with who owns hives, but lives 125 miles away, so I can’t claim local points but I think it counts for artisanal +1

Golden Crown’s 100% fruit & veggie juice – corporate bottled juice from a grocery store – 1

Total Food Smugness Points +7

I knew I should have added that flax meal & juiced some kale for green juice

This post was inspired by an actual encounter Monday and a request by Aunt Becky Wednesday to tell her what irritates us


Mommy Wants Vodka

12 comments:

LizzieMade said...

I think +7 Smugness Points are probably borderline on the Interesting/Sickeningly Smug scale... Your smoothy sounds healthy and very tasty, so I think you should just ingnore the Food Smugness Crowd and drink the smoothy!
I like smoothies in summer as well. Strawberry, banana and a little milk & yoghourt are nice, maybe with a drizzle of honey (though I can't have dairy now, so it will be soy milk & yoghourt this year!). Have you tried banana in your smoothie - super lovely (so long as you like them of course!).
A banana, honey, yoghourt and dash-of-milk make a fab breakfast smoothy. You can add a little spoonful or so of oats or cereal flakes before you blend it - more fibre and more nuttiness in the taste.
Yuuummmm now I'm hungry!

SciFi Dad said...

My wife is into these. She uses flash-frozen fruits (like berries and mango), yogurt, fresh bananas and baby spinach leaves. My son will literally devour one if you let him, spinach and all. Ditto for my daughter.

Me? I'm holding out for a pepperoni bacon smoothie.

Balinda said...

I am seriously LMAO over here...Food Smugness...a new catch phrase for me..
I would have something in a minus category cuz my smoothie would have just been store bought =O

Creative Junkie said...

holy smokes - I never thought of it that way! How would I describe my favorite smoothie? Ummm .... cold. Yummy. Pricey.

It's the new black cherry one from Panera. YUMMMMM.

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Michelle said...

HAHAHA -- nice. Amazing how smug folks can get with their food. While I can understand wanting to support local economy, etc. going to such lengths to show how much of a support youare by way of your smoothie... ridiculous. Looks like the makings of a great smoothie, regardless of where the ingredients were from or smugness value involved!

Comfy Mom said...

I sometimes freeze banana halves when they get soft and use them in the smoothies to save the bananas

Comfy Mom said...

I've tried spinach in mine, but I'm probably doing something wrong because they don't blend well in my blender and I find myself drinking spinach strings which is unappetizing. It's the one thing that inclines me toward getting a juicer. If I could only find storage space for one

Comfy Mom said...

I like a banana & Nutella smoothie sometimes. I don't mind the additives like flax, they are ingredients that add something. I just don't see why I need to know the pedigree of the strawberries and yogurt as well.

Melissa said...

Interesting take on smoothies. I have to say - you racked up more points than my smoothies would have.

CoffeeJitters.Net (Judy Haley) said...

i can soooo relate to this - i guess i need to work on improving my smugness points ;)

Darcy said...

BWUAHAHAHAH - while I know you're not talking about me...you're talking about me...though I never do it for smug factor. But yeah..if I can add more nutrition to it, I do, but without all the adjectives, though I'm not beyond suggesting additives for other folks' smoothies if they're willing to listen! LOL

My fav isn't so healthy..peanut butter, banana and chocolate (SHOULD use carob, but I use ovaltine). *sigh* to die for. (and yeah - I toss in flax and wheat germ to make me feel like it's healthier. but now you make me feel bad that they're both corporate. I'll just hang my head in shame :P