Recipe: The Essential Breakfast Smoothie

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast." -Oscar Wilde

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Color me dull. I will be a wholly ineffective person if I do not have a healthy "breakfast" to get me going. I put the word "breakfast" in quotes because my current schedule would indicate that most people call it "lunch". You see, I usually get up between 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM. It's not that I'm lazy (although I am a devoted procrastinator), I am on a shifted schedule that has me going to bed between 2:00 and 4:00 AM. I still get my 8 to 9 hours of sleep each night, and I feel better than ever.

What does this have to do with smoothies?!

Well, to make a short story long...even when my schedule had me getting out of bed at 4:30 or 5:00 AM each morning, this smoothie was still an essential part of my day. When I lived in South America making a smoothie each morning was not a realistic possibility, so I had to search for something that worked for me. What worked for me was mate de coca and fresh pan with some sort of fruit marmalade. When I don't make smoothies I have raw nut milk with live cereal or some heirloom whole grain cereal. Its even better if you can find a few great breakfast meals that work for you. The point is...find what works for you to get your day started off right, and go for it. Make your health a priority each morning, and it will set a great tone for the rest of the day. Okay, enough preaching already...time for my smoothie recipe:

Ingredients
1 organic banana
6-10 organic frozen strawberries
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1-2 tablespoons raw honey (or agave nectar, or medjool dates)
1-2 cups of organic unfiltered apple juice
(optional) 1/4 cup wheat germ
(optional) 1/4 cup organic flax seeds (preferably raw)
(optional) 1 tablespoon pure synergy superfood
(optional) 1 organic açaí packet (or 2 scoops organic açaí powder)
(optional) 1/4 teaspoon fresh organic ginger, peeled

Equipment
1 Blender
1 Large glass or (or bowl)

Steps:
1. Open the banana and break it up into the blender. I have found that adding the banana first will allow your smoothie to mix far better than adding it at the end.

2. Add your strawberries and any optional items now. You want your flax seeds/wheat germ/powder to be between the strawberries and the blue berries (which will go on top next). The reasoning...if you add it last a lot of it will just stick to the top sides of your blender.

3. Now add your blueberries and lastly your unfiltered apple juice (cranberry juice and various lemonades work well too).

4. Put the cap on the blender, hit the ice crush button a few times (if your blender has one), and blend it at a moderate speed for a good minute or until you've had the "vortex" going for awhile.

5. Pour into a glass for a smoothie, or pour into a bowl and top with granola and/or fruit.

End notes: This recipe easily serves two...usually the smoothie for the wife and the the bowl topped with hemp plus granola for myself. However, I used to make this recipe solely for myself in a large bowl each morning and it kept me completely satified (and hunger-pain free) for half the day. I have recommended this morning gig to many friends and co-workers and several have told me that they're hooked. Since there are countless alternatives to the types of smoothies/bowls you can make, don't be afraid to experiement and share what works best for you.

What is your favorite/essential breakfast? What is your favorite/essential smoothie?

Recipe: Raw Cashew Milk

"Never cry over spilt milk, because it may have been poisoned." -W.C. Fields

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I stopped drinking traditional bovine milk at about the same time that I became a vegetarian...which was about six years ago. In the same way that I suddenly realized that all of those soda beverages were nothing bunch a heap of nasty (read: shitty) chemicals, I came to the conclusion that there might be something a little strange with consuming the milk that was intended for bovine youth. For a long while I switched around between soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, oat milk, and even hemp milk. None of them were really excited me all that much and were merely passable...with the one exception being hemp milk...which carried a completely revolting flavor. I was also fairly unimpressed with the freshness and quality of the milk alternatives as some were only marginally healthier than organic bovine milk. Fortunately, I don't have any of these problems any more...all thanks to discovering the benefits of homemade raw nut milks.

I first started making my own raw cashew milk about three or four months ago...and I have been incredibly impressed how wonderful of an alternative it has been. Here is a step-by-step recipe for creating your own unique batches of nut (cashews, almonds, walnuts, macadamia) milk.

Ingredients
3-4 cups Filtered Water
1-2 tablespoons Vanilla
1-2 tablespoons Raw Honey
1-2 pinches of Celtic Sea Salt

Equipment
1 Blender
1 Large Bowl

Steps:
1. Soak 1 Cup of raw cashews with 1 Cup of filtered water for 24-36 hours. Some people prefer a shorter soaking period, but I have found that soaking them for this longer period makes for much smoother and richer nut milk. Also, make sure you are getting raw nuts...roasted/salted/cooked nuts will not work well in this case. Change the water out and rinse the nuts once a day.

2. Rinse your soaked nuts very well...at least three solid washes to get out any nasties that may have been floating about. Once they have been soaked well and rinsed off they should look like this.

3. Place the soaked nuts in a blender and pour in 1 cup of filtered water. Blend well for at least a minute. Once this has been blended up well is should appear thick and smooth.

4. At this point you will add your desired ingredients. I add my vanilla (liquid or bean works great) and raw honey by sight. As you get more comfortable with making your own nut milk you'll discover just how much vanilla and raw honey you like. (Some people prefer medjool dates or agave syrup in place of honey.) Add the pinch or two of Celtic Sea Salt...it's not used for taste, but as a thickening agent. It really makes a big difference to add this high-quality salt!

5. Add 2 cups of filtered water if you like your nut milk thick and creamy, or add 3 cups of filtered water if you like a more watery texture to your milk.

6. Blend it all well for at least a minute, but more preferably two or three minutes.

7. Pour it into a sealable glass container and it will stay good in your fridge for at least a week. Enjoy it with cereal, granola, or drink it straight!

End notes: Cashew milk tends to come out a little creamier than almond or walnut milk, so some people like to strain the little nutty pieces out of those types...it's never bothered me, and actually adds some texture to your cereal, but straining is an option albeit a wasteful one if you don't consume the strained mush. Also, high-quality ingredients tend to yield high-quality nut milk, and vice-versa. Experiment and share you variations!

So how did your nut milk turn out? Did you find it to be a better alternative than bovine milk or conventional alternatives like store-bought soy, rice, and almond milk?

It all begins here...

Here.

Welcome to here. We all arrived from some place, and now we’re all here. How did we get here? Why did we come here? We all have a background story…

January 26, 2003. I never really believed it would be an important date in my history…I couldn’t even recall what the exact date was…I had to google “Super Bowl 2003” to rediscover it. That’s right, the Super Bowl.

I found myself rolling out of bed to an empty house this particular morning. It seemed no different than every other lazy Sunday prior…the fact that it was Super Bowl Sunday was of little consequence to me. Truth be told…I hated the Super Bowl. I still hate the Super Bowl. I don’t care for American-rules football and I really loathe the so-called Super Bowl advertisements. Actually, I pretty much despise all advertisements. A fairly telling statement for someone who graduated with an undergraduate degree in marketing eight months prior to this particular Sunday…

So as I came to I realized I had a decision to make. I could get myself together and go to the Super Bowl party I had been invited to, or I could find some other reason that would enable me to not go. Visions of piles of inedible food and zombified friends entranced by an electrified box started to weight down my consciousness. What is so super about this party?

Actually, that’s probably how I envisioned it looking from the perspective where I currently reside…I probably was not in a very sociable mood at the time.

So I meander to my bedroom and take a glance at the dusty bookshelf…specifically, the second row form the top. Lying there was a book I had purchased six months prior to that day…and for six months it had remained there unopened and unattended.

Whenever I had a term paper, research paper, or any kind of time-consuming academic project that did not hold a shred of interest to me…I usually found myself doing the most horrific of activities…I cleaned. I would rather wash all my clothes, reorganize and combine the various piles that I had chronologically placed all over my room, windex my windows, and vacuum the entire house than sit down and hammer out a dreaded project.

So I made a deal with myself…I would sit down on the couch and start to read this book. If for whatever reason it did not hold my interest after twenty or so minutes, I would go to the damn Super Bowl party. I made this deal with myself at 10:20 or so…

By about 1:30 (or so) I had completed the book. Being a very slow reader and all, this was of course 1:30 AM…a full 15 hours after I had picked it up. I had sat on the couch for nearly the entire day before moving back to my bed to finish reading the book in relative solitude. I was that interested in what I was reading…and completely compelled to continue until there were no more pages to be read…

Here.

Now I am here…nearly six years later. It really seems far far longer than that. I am but a shadow of whoever that person was… I am completely different now, but very content with the person I have become.

Was the book solely responsible for my transformation? I don’t know. It certainly is not the best book I’ve ever read…but it got me thinking, and viewing, the world in a completely different light. Perhaps my environment had conditioned me to be ripe and receptive to the message I was taking in. That is certainly a strong possibility...

This is the short version of how I ended up here. How did you end up here?