Green Smoothies!

Thanks to Pinterest and all the wonderful things that are on it, I have discovered Green Smoothies.

They. Are. DELICIOUS.  

After finding multiple recipes I have come up with some of my own that I have decided to share.  I am still on my calorie-counting diet and lots of the recipes I found were REALLY high calorie.  Now I know that most of that comes from fruit and I didn't want to skimp on that since it's the fruit that gives them such a good flavor.  Plus the calories from fruit aren't the processed white sugar or high fructose corn syrup kind, so they are essentially "good" calories.  But I did improve on the calories that are coming from the yogurt and/or milk.  I went for Greek yogurt since I was looking to add lots of protein to it and found vanilla Dannon Light and Fit Greek yogurt.  They only have 80 calories in one container and 12 grams of protein.  I also have found that I love soy milk in my Starbucks coffee instead of regular milk.  It makes my tummy happier and I don't get that gross bloating feeling after I drink them.  So for the smoothies I am using Silk Light vanilla soy milk which has 70 calories and 6 grams of protein in 1 cup.  That means that all of the smoothies start with 18 grams of protein!!  I have all the fruit frozen in ziplock bags to make them easy to throw together.  I peeled and sliced some bananas and froze them, bought frozen pineapple and peaches and them got some frozen mango, guava and passion fruit pulp (which has 2 to 3 grams of protein in each) to save me from buying whole mangos and things like that.  Sometimes I have to add a little bit of water to make the smoothies not so thick and though it says 2 cups spinach, I just keep adding until the blender is full and the smoothie is green enough.  So without further ado, here are my recipes.

Pineapple Mango Smoothie
(413 cal, 20 g protein)

1 cup light Silk
1 container light Greek yogurt
1 frozen banana (7 inches)
1 cup frozen pineapple
1/2 cup frozen mango pulp
2 cups spinach



Peach Mango Smoothie
(373 cal, 20 g protein)


1 cup light Silk
1 container light Greek yogurt
1 frozen banana (7 inches)
1 cup frozen peaches
1/2 cup frozen mango pulp
2 cups spinach



Banana Guava Smoothie
(394 cal, 21 g protein)


1 cup light Silk
1 container light Greek yogurt
1 frozen banana (7 inches)
1/2 cup frozen guava pulp
2 cups spinach




Pineapple Passion Fruit Smoothie
(394 cal, 21 g protein)


1 cup light Silk
1 container light Greek yogurt
1 frozen banana (7 inches)
1 cup frozen pineapple
1/2 cup frozen passion fruit pulp
2 cups spinach



Passion Fruit Guava Smoothie
(384 cal, 22 g protein)


1 cup light Silk
1 container light Greek yogurt
1 frozen banana (7 inches)
1/2 cup frozen passion fruit pulp
1/2 cup frozen guava pulp
2 cups spinach

Spring where art thou?

I know that it's still January, but I am definitely ready for the temperature to warm up.  It's like living in a very cold Hawaii around here.  You know how the high is always around 80 and the lows are around 70 in Hawaii?  Same for Eastern Washington right now except the high is 30 and the low is 20.  I think every time I've gone outside recently it's been 26. If it's 6 in the morning? 26 degrees.  Around 4 when I get off of work? 26 degrees.  And always cloudy/foggy.  It's the inversion layer that usually settles in this time of year, trapping all the cold temperatures in the valleys and letting the pass warm up to 45 or 50 some days.  With all the depressingly consistent weather, I have been looking to my seed catalogs for hope.  I did the seed inventory left over from last year and tossed everything that was over 2 years old.  The seeds become less faithful in germinating as time goes on, so out they go.  That meant that there was a lot of new seeds to buy, which doesn't hurt my feelings but does hurt the pocketbook.  I picked different varieties of all sorts of veggies.  New peas, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn...the list goes on and on.  We are also doing a whole drying bean section of the garden this year!  White beans, red beans, split peas and more!  At the end of the summer we tend to get neglectful of the garden and these are perfect for that.  You grow them and ignore them until they are dried on their vines and then harvest them.  I'm planning on putting together little jars of mixed beans for Christmas presents and attaching a soup recipe to it.  So excited!

I've also got a couple of knitting projects going on.  The infinity scarf I started for my cousin Katey after Christmas is coming off the needles as we speak (pictures to follow) and since my hands have been so cold I am planning a couple of different fingerless mitt projects.  I know Melinda is creeped out by fingerless gloves, but I find them perfect!  I get warm hands and I still can read a book, knit or type up a blog.  So here are the two that I've got the yarn and patterns for...

First I am making two pairs of these, one for me and one for Mom.  I found the perfect yarns that are light brown/grey/cream that make me think of barn owls...

Then I got some yarn in this fabulous color.

And I'm going to make these with it...

All that and reading too!  When do I have time for work? ;)

Reading Habits

I don't tend to think that I read a lot of books, but at the end of last year I thought about keeping a reading diary.  You know, just writing down the titles of the books I read to see what I had accomplished.  I wrote down all the books I could remember reading that year, which probably was only the last 3 or 4 months, and I filled a whole page!  Granted it's a smaller journal type page, but I thought that was pretty good.  Here's my list from last year from memory.

My Name is Memory
Bitterblue
The Crimson Crown (I've been eating this series alive...waiting for every fall and a new book)
Sapphique
Matched
Crossed
Divergent
Insurgent
Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (The Jane Austen 50 Shades of Gray!)
All Wound Up
Beautiful Creatures
Rebecca
Green Darkness
Found
Double Identity
Endless Magic (I'd already been through the first three in the series the year before)
Mermaid

I don't tend to spend the majority of my time reading.  Honestly I spend the majority of my time at work.  But to relax right before I go to sleep I often read a chapter (or two...or three if it's gotten really good) laying in bed, now often with a pair of fingerless mitts to keep my hands warm.  I'm not opposed to reading hardcovers or softcover or even a Kindle now and then.  Books are typically good gifts to give me and I adore going to bookstores, rarely ever coming out empty handed.  And so it was that this stack appeared on my desk after Christmas...

I bought a few of those myself at Costco right after Christmas and the top one, Seraphina, I got at our local bookstore, Inklings.  Let's see if I can make through the stack this year! I also got a few more books for my Kindle when they had a sale after Christmas.  And then there's my Audible account...does it count as reading when it's being read to you?