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.

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