Green Smoothies in India

Gee I never realised that i would miss my green smoothie as much as I did. It went something like this. Before we left for India I had to consider just how I would make a green smoothie without my Hi-Blend or my Vitamix super blender. We were going to be away for the whole month and I knew without any doubt that it would be difficult to survive without my Green Smoothie for all that time. First was how to replace the super blender to produce something that would resemble a Green Smoothie I also knew that I could Never achieve the level of creaminess of my regular smoothie but that was still an acceptable compromise. I did a test drive on various stick and personal blenders and finally settled on taking a powerful 400 watt stick blender and a seed grinder to pre-grind the seeds and nuts.

The smoothie package looked like this:

A pack each of almonds, cashews, macadamia, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds.
Barley green powder, raw cacao powder, hemp seed powder, and maca powder that I decanted into enough single smoothie packs for the anticipatednumber of smoothies that I could make.
A packet of dehydrated kale in case of emergency where I could not get any greens.
A sharp knife (had to remember to put it into the suitcase going into the hold otherwise it would be confiscated, just like another 2 pen knives that I forgot to transfer).

We stayed in Mumbai one night so breakfast was a milky tea and a rubbery parathas. The next breakfast was in Delhi where the selection for breakfast was sweet milky tea, porridge and milk, toast and butter or toast and jam. Mmmm, to eat or not to eat, that was the question. I chose the toast and jam and tea.  I am a firm believer that the benefit or the detrimental effect of what we eat relates to our state of mind and intention, so, being wheat and dairy intolerant, I had the choice of focusing on the problems of the wheat bread and the dairy in the tea or to see it as great food that my body would lovingly accept to nourish me and remove the pangs of hunger. So, before taking the first bite, I waved my hands over the toast and said “Green Smoothie, Green Smoothie”. This was a bit like looking for a miracle similar to Aladdin saying A b r a c a d a b r a!

Our next breakfast offering was a simple Indian breakfast of wheat porridge, buffalo milk, brown sugar, toast, butter and jam. It was now 3 days without a Green Smoothie and I was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms. I had managed to accumulate a bit of fruit so was contented with a fruit , nut and seed smoothie knowing that I would be into my greens Very soon.

DAY 4 A Green Smoothie at last! We found green leaves in abundance and the limited variety of fruit was fresh and of good quality so we made some simple Green Smoothie combinations such as:

Pawpaw, Banana, Naartjie, Apple, Lime, seeds and nuts and one of the additives and a load of spinach leaves. It was pure heaven! For 6 days we delighted in a big jug of Green Smoothie where flavours were altered by increasing and reducing the quantities of fruit and the variety of additives

DAY 10 The train journey to Delhi certainly did not offer Smoothies in the menu and no, please don’t ask me what we had for breakfast.

Day 11 Another bread and jam and milky tea which means another day without a Green Smoothie and more Abracadabra

DAY 12 The first day at the Ayruvedic Centre and guess what? Not even an Ayruvedic Smoothie for breakfast. Well that didn’t last long, I quickly convinced the Doctor that I REALLY needed Green Smoothies

DAY 13 Request for green leaves were met with general confusion about what I was looking for. The kitchen manager agreed to go and bring back green leaves from the market. Based on this, we enjoyed a fruit smoothie, upgraded with some raw cacoa, seeds and nuts.

DAY 14 To my absolute amazement the trip to the market proved unsuccessful. Can you imagine no green leaves! I mean absolutely No Green Leaves!! After some investigation I established that the Indians in the province of Kerela do not eat green leaves. So, what now? How do you make a Green Smoothie without green leaves? Oh yes! I remembered that in my bag of tricks was a bag of dehydrated kale – not truly a green smoothie because quantities were limited and these had to serve my salad upgrades too.

DAY 15 Today I added some Barley Life to the smoothie which gave it a definite green tinge. It wasn’t really a Green Smoothie, but that green tinge just made me feel better.

DAY 16 Great excitement today! I established that the leaves from the ‘drumstick’ tree are edible so guess what? Today I was in celebration, the first Green Smoothie in 5 days. Mmmm, it looked like a green smoothie and tasted like one – Just So Delicious. How can I explain the passion.

DAY 17 Another delicious drumstick smoothie. And I am told that drumstick leaves are very nutritious.

DAY 18 What a shock! Today my Ayruvedic detox started in ernest and Green Smoothies were no longer on the menu.

DAY 19-26 NO GREEN SMOOTHIES – Say no more!

DAY 27 Intense persuasion convinced the Doctor that I Really needed to get back to Green Smoothies so this morning I found some more drumstick leaves and savoured my first Green Smoothie in 9 days AND today we took an auto-rickshaw to the nearest town of Kottayam and low and behold, in a little vegetable shop I found and bought a bunch of one of two bunches of green leaves.

DAYS 28-32 We enjoyed not only Green Smoothies with green leaves
and our usual additives but now we had a Kerela
touch to things with the addition of what is known as tender coconut.
Oh, it’s great to be back home with my Vitamix Super Blender and enough home grown greens to make all the smoothies I like.

If you have any stories of passion about your green smoothies please share them, we would love to hear them.

Own a Vitamix Super Blender? Have a Smoothie in the Mountains

Birthdays come and birthdays go but this one was different. Seems banking the gifts up like time share seems to pay off. Michael and I received one of these banked up gifts form our daughters and wow has it been awesome! Three days at Cathedral Peak Hotel in the Drakensberg Mountains.

When going away, the question of food always comes up. Will they cater? Can they cater for vegetarians? It is always so high up on our list due to so many times when food has seriously been a take your own and hope they have some veggie food to supplement what we brought with. In the case of Cathedral Peak that is not an issue. Not only do they  have food for us but they are prepared to go out of their way to accommodate requests.

Eating rules are I guess part of everyones lifestyle whether a vegetarian or not. We always hear I don’t eat this or that and then there are the, I just could not live without meat or margarine. So besides being vegetarian we also have some rules. To avoid the stress on both sides of the fence, we have rules for home and rules for out. This means that for example, biscuits and bread and cheese are usually not on our shopping list but if we are away we break the rules to add some variety to the usually limited fare on offer. The area that we don’t usually like to mess with when away is our green smoothie breakfast and so our Vitamix comes with us. As you can see from the picture, the faceplate of this Vitamix is quite old. The be precise, it is the original Vitamix that we ordered from Vita-Mix Corp in the USA in 1995 when there was no International dealer in  South Africa. This stunning piece of equipment has been pumping out smoothies, soups, nut butters, frozen desserts and so much more for all these years.

The pink bag in the picture was a give away at Clicks some years ago when puchasing some cosmetics and wow has it turned out to be a gem. With plates and knives and forks and serviettes and ample area to carry our selection of nuts, seeds and green powders for our smoothies plus some herb teas, mugs and the emergency marmite (rules for out).

So, the hotel staff had no problem in sending a tray to our room with our chosen selection of fruit and a pail of ice AND a small fridge! Then, in addition to enjoying our delightful green smoothie we have enjoyed the breathtaking scenery of Cathedral Peak and surrounds that changes every minute of the day. As the sun moves so the mountains change and when the cloud covers the blue blue autumn sky it all takes on a completely different hue.

It has been a time to reflect the changes we want to our lives, plans for our health businesses, and an opportunity to enjoy some hiking, the great putting course and some awesome tennis, stunning music and just quiet time to listen to some of Byron Katie’s CD’s that we brought back from The School for The Work in Los Angeles, California last month.

I used to get sideways looks when I started looking for bags to pack the Oscar Juicer, the Vitamix and other useful equipment for self catering accommodation but these days, Michael joyfully packs up the Vitamix as we share the knowledge that the equipment enhances our lifestyle both at home and away.