Green Smoothies (or sometimes red or brown or blue)!

In a post a while back I listed the ingredients I used in a special “mood” smoothie. Since then, I’ve had a few requests for a “normal,” everyday smoothie. Here it is:

1) Fruit as a base. Can be a young coconut (water and meat) and/or a banana and/or an orange. Any fruit, really. Grapes, apple, frozen organic berries (yes, freezing ‘em wipes out a bunch of the enzymes, but still pretty healthy), pineapple, mango, whatever. Plus I always add Goji berries, no matter what other fruit is in there. I peel and toss in a whole lemon pretty often, too.

2) Dark leafy greens. I rotate kale, spinach, collards, dandelion greens, and sometimes weirder, freakier greens (escarole, etc.).

3) A handful of raw, organic nuts and/or seeds. For nuts: walnuts, pecans (Taoists are big on pecans!), almonds, pine nuts, Brazil nuts. For seeds: chia (soaked overnight, about 2 tablespoons), hemp, sunflower, pumpkin.

4) Water.

5) If I'm NOT using a young coconut, I'll add a couple tablespoons of raw coconut oil (Tropical Traditions).

6) An avocado (peeled, seeded). Add this last, cuz' it thickens the thing so much, and so quickly, that it makes blending tougher.

7) Cinnamon, mon (a rasta comment)

DIRECTIONS
Start with a small amount of greens and gradually build, minimizing the fruit little by little until you find that line where it still tastes good but is not a sugar bomb. Don’t worry. That line will move (toward more and more veggies) as you get healthier and healthier. The big, big super crazy health is in the greens, so you want as many of those bad boys as are palatable. Keep edging it up.

In a hurry, that’s enough. That’s a perfectly fine, basic, respectable smoothie. However, mine have gotten a little fancier over the years. Here’s what ELSE might go into mine (bearing in mind they’re different every day), in ADDITION to the above.

MARKS FANCY PANTS EXTRAS
1) Fresh ginger, an inch or so.

2) Burdock root (about 4 inches)

3) Stinging nettle decoction for my liquid. Packed with massive, disease-crushing minerals. Put 1 cup in a 1 quart mason jar, fill with boiling water before bed, let it steep, covered, over night (got this from Patrick Timpone on One Radio).

4) Other veggies. Whatever’s around. Broccoli, bell peppers, green beans, carrot, whatever. Plus I always add celery. (Bernard Jensen revealed how the organic sodium in the celery helps the organic calcium from the greens stay “in solution” in the body so the cells can actually use it.). Oh, and very commonly I add some beet.

5) Occasionally I’ll add some raw egg yolks.

6) Maca. About 2 tablespoons.

7) All sorts of PRL’s beautiful, insanely-pure superfoodish supplement-ish things. These are always changing, but lately it’s been: dark cherry concentrate, pomegranate concentrate, colostrum, tocotrienals.

There you have it, folks. Enjoy!

Tao of Diet Transformation

A client gave me the book The Tao of Pooh for a gift a while ago, and a few lines seemed so appropriate to the process of overhauling how we eat. Well actually, the whole book does. But I might get in legal trouble if I transcribe the entire book here. Plus it would make for a rather long post. Plus, too much work. Pooh ("the most effortless bear") would never do such a thing.

"...when you try too hard, it doesn't work...The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard—one that thinks too much...This mind tries too hard, wears itself out, and ends up weak and sloppy [and, I might add, directing you too binge on Cheetoes]."

By the way, on an unrelated note, here's a really smart interview with John Robbins:

http://www.garynull.com/Documents/spectrum/interview_with_john_robbins.htm

Use the Zealots!

When regular people want to start eating healthy, and they pick up a nutrition book, they often find themselves with a book by a health fanatic. Such books are very common. Most of us, when confronted by a nutritonal zealot, ditch the book and look for saner fare. Natural enough. We feel the rigidity, the unsettling fervor, and we naturally recoil. But I think it’s wise to come at it differently. Like my chiro pal Michael Nokken counseled me long ago: “Learn from the zealots!”

Consider it, most of the big advances we’ve gotten in any field came from people who were zealots—a little nutty about what they were into. Who else is going to spend every waking minute of their lives doing all the work and the research and the experimentation? You and I are too busy, y’know, having lives and stuff. The martial art world would not have been revolutionized if not for the extreme explorations of Bruce Lee or the Gracie brothers. Check out Mozart’s life or Balanchine’s or Balzac’s. I don’t know much about Einstein’s life, but I’ll bet he was pretty “fanatical” too (if his haircare habits are any indication).



The point is that we can USE the findings and knowledge of zealots without, ourselves, actually BECOMING a zealot. We can, as the 12 steppers say, “Take what we like and leave the rest.” Raw foodists, macrobiotics people and Ayurveda folks can all sound pretty flakey and “out there.” But so what!? That doesn’t necessarily mean their information is unsound. Dig through their dogma and ideology and excavate their research, carefully weigh the arguments and evidence they present on their own merit (no matter how goofily (or scarily) they convey it) and do some experimentation in your own private laboratory—your own body. Soon you may find yourself feeling an affectionate humor toward the health zealots of the world. And even receiving the fruits of their albeit extreme labors with gratitude.