The Green Monster!

Okay, so I've been slacking on this, I know... So I figured I should get on here and share a recipe.  But what recipe could I write about quickly and easily?  How about one I make every single morning?
Green Smoothies!!
Or as they are called in our house, Smoo-Gies! (don't ask - we're kind of stange.)

I love love love green smoothies - they're the first thing I did when I decided to change my diet earlier this year, and the first thing I've done in a long time that actually had results!  We got our VitaMix in February and right around then I found a blog that suggested a 30 day green smoothie challenge.  What better timing, right?  Even with just that addition to my diet I noticed my skin cleared up, I was way more regular, I felt more energy, and I just felt cleaner, if that's a thing.  One of my coworkers even stopped me in the hall one day and said "whatever you're doing it's working - your skin is absolutely glowing!"  Who doesn't love a good compliment like that?  So I did continue, and haven't looked back :) Now, 4 months later, I'm still drinking a green smoothie almost every day (they sometimes get skipped on weekends when I sleep in) and I've got it down to a science!  I've even got my mom doing it and loving her results as well!

Let's start with prep - it's my best friend when it comes to smoogies.  I don't often make anything if it involves long prep times and dishes to wash.  So when I go to the produce stand, I do an hour or so of prep and I'm good for like a month!

Greens:
I like to use a mixture of spinach and kale.  I've used other greens before when we juiced, and they were all fine, but S+K are my go-tos because they're consistent, I can always get them at my local produce stand for a great price, and the mild spinach mellows out the acquired taste of the kale.  I get 3 bags of spinach and 2 bunches of kale each time I go.  This will last me quite a while, because I make green cubes with them!
I blend the spinach and kale in my VitaMix with a tiny bit of water (just enough to get it moving around) and pour it into ice cube trays and freeze.  This way, I never have to worry about greens going bad in my fridge, having to buy them every 4 or 5 days, and it also adds a nice icyness to my smoogies.  Another added bonus is that frozen spinach doesn't really taste like anything, so if you don't like the taste of greens, you won't notice them at all!

Fruit:
I like to freeze most of my fruit too.  I'll peel bananas, cut them in half, and freeze them in single layers on wax paper before throwing them in a ziploc in the freezer door.  Pineapple will get a similar treatment, being cut into 8-24 pieces and frozen solid and bagged.  Cherries get pitted and frozen, blueberries can just be washed, dried, and thrown into a bag.  I also like to buy frozen fruit when I can get a good price.  Publix does BOGO on dole frozen fruit sometimes, and once I got a huge bag of mixed tropical frozen fruit at BJ's with a coupon.  I try to mix it up, but bananas blueberries and pineapple are my standards.
Now, I don't usually throw the fruit into the blender straight from the freezer - remember what I said about frozen spinach having no flavor?  That happens to a lot of fruit too (especially peaches!) and we don't want that - we want to be able to taste the delicious fruit!  So every night before I go to bed, I fill my smoothie cup with frozen fruit and pop it in the fridge to thaw overnight.  In the morning, I have a perfect portion of fruit that's thawed but not mushy and gross, ready to go!

Liquid:
This one varies a lot.  I used to make almond milk really frequently.  I kind of got tired of peeling almond skins all the time so if it's on sale and I can find a coupon, I'll just go for store bought.  Sorry, but I'm kind of lazy... Not that making almond milk is hard, but it goes bad pretty quickly, so I was making it 2-3 times a week.
Sometimes I use a nondairy milk, but more frequently I've been using juice.  If V8splash is on sale I'll get that, because it adds a bit of vegetable goodness to my smoogies beyond the greens!  In a real pinch, I'll just use water - as long as there's a lot of fruit, it's still delicious!

Add-ins:
I don't have a daily protocol for these, I just add in whatever I'm feeling like for the day, but some of my favorites are:
Vegan protein powder (I love love love PlantFusion!)
chia seeds (especially if you have lots of liquid, these will thicken it up)
ground flax seed (mmmm, Omega-3s!)
spirulina powder
unsweetened shredded coconut
cocoa powder / peanut butter (these are usually when I'm running low on fruit and have a banana-heavy smoogie!)

Assembly:
Couldn't be easier.  Seriously, you may be thinking "it would be easier if I just went to Smoothie King"  NOPE!  You'd have to drive there, wait in line, make sure the person very clearly understand you don't want any dairy in your smoothie, and then you have to pay for it!  I prefer my way... I dump in my cup of thawed fruit, add some liquid, green cubes (5-6,) add-ins, and blend!
Clean-up used to be my least favorite thing in the world, but that's another thing that's changed with the VitaMix.  Most of the time you can just rinse it clean, but if there's something on the sides that won't rinse, all you do is fill it halfway with water, add 2 drops of soap, and run it for 10-20 seconds.  Then rinse and you're set!  Love it.
As you can tell I'm not one to use recipes, but I know some people need them, so I've put a few together from smoogies that turned out extra delicious :) 
I hope you try some and enjoy!

 Green Julius: 
2 Oranges, peeled and seeded
1 banana, frozen
5-6 green cubes
1/2-1 cup non-dairy milk

Chocolate Covered Cherry
1 cup cherries (thawed if using frozen)
1/2 banana
1 scoop chocolate vegan protein powder
1/2 - 1 cup non-dairy milk
5-6 green cubes

 Bluth Frozen Banana
1 1/2 bananas
1 generous scoop peanut butter
1 scoop chocolate vegan protein powder
1/2 - 1 cup non-dairy milk
5-6 green cubes

 Tropical Delight
1/4 pineapple (thawed if frozen)
1 banana
1/2 - 1 cup orange juice (or orange mango V8)
1 tbsp coconut flakes
5-6 green cubes

Berry Delicious
1/2 cup thawed cherries
1/2 cup thawed blueberries
1/2 cup thawed strawberries
1/2 cup juice or non-dairy milk
5-6 green cubes

 The door of my freezer is constantly full of rotating bags of fruit

 It may not be pretty, but these green cubes are FULL of vitamins and nutrients!  If I had kids, this would for sure be a go-to way to get them to eat more greens :)

But what difference can one person make? Environment edition

One frequent question I get when asked about why I transitioned to veganism, is "what difference do you really think one person is going to make?"  Lots of people agree that what we're doing to animals in this country is an abomination - factory farming is pure cruelty, but I'm only one person, if I stop eating animal products, what's going to happen?
I'll tell you what - WAY more than you think!

This was a concern I had as well when I started delving into the world of "ethical veganism."  I've mentioned before that my husband and I started our journey with health as our primary motivator.  But the more research I did, the more I learned about the treatment of animals and the more that became an equal contributor in my decision to stop eating them.  I've come across quite a few incredible infographics on this topic and will include them here so you can see as well, but let's break it up a bit - today I'll just talk about our diet's impact on the environment.

Everyone loves the environment - right?  We're all taught to conserve water in school, and I challenge you to find someone who isn't familiar with the "reduce, reuse recycle" motto.  But no one really ever mentions how much the livestock industry contributes to the destruction of the earth... til now of course!
  If you get a chance, here's a fascinating article about the use of freshwater resources in the livestock industry: http://www.forksoverknives.com/freshwater-abuse-and-loss-where-is-it-all-going/
Fresh water is like the one thing everyone agrees is a pretty hot commodity, and is insanely important.  There are laws about when and how often we can water our lawns, water-saving toilets, showers, and other appliances are hugely popular, and everyone knows not to leave the water running while you brush your teeth!  But we don't learn facts in school like this: 2500 gallons of water are used in the production of each pound of beef.  Almost half of all the water used in our country is used by the livestock industry, while less than one percent is used by humans for drinking. 
It's not just the water these animals drink - it's also the water required to grow their feed.  We're essentially using water twice for a single source of human food.  Because of this, and other factors, the production of one pound of meat requires 50 times as much water as the production of a pound of vegetables.  That means that my personal water usage is 50 times smaller than that of a meat-eater, simply by being vegan.
Here's an example from that article I mentioned that really puts it in perspective: "One of the more common actions people tend to take in an effort to reduce their freshwater footprint is to reduce their shower time by a minute or two each day. The average shower requires 8 minutes and twenty gallons of water. Cutting off two minutes of shower time would conserve five gallons of water daily. This is all good … however, forgoing a single burger or steak at lunch that same day would save 500 to 1,000 gallons of water. Cutting out a turkey sandwich or a chicken salad would save 200 gallons of water. Herein lies the real opportunity for individual activism... Between 1,700 and 4,000 gallons of water are needed to produce one pound of beef, 880 gallons to produce one gallon of milk, and over 100 gallons to produce a single egg!
Many of the commercial vegetable and fruit farms I’ve interviewed grow their products without any irrigation, yielding 2,000 to 20,000 pounds of annual produce per acre, grown simply with rainwater."

Anyone else feeling different about their personal contribution to the environment? I know I am!

While we're on the topic of the environment, let's talk about our carbon footprint.  Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide are the big three gases that contribute to climate change.  If you don't believe in climate change or "global warming" please click the red "X" in the corner of this page - I won't be offended.
 Everyone would agree that driving a hybrid car will cut down on CO2 and help the environment, right?  What if I told you that you can reduce your carbon footprint by 50% more by going vegan for a year?  Crazy, right?  If every American simply went vegan for one meal a week, it would reduce the same amount of CO2 emissions as 500,000 cars.  WHAT??!! 
Now, while everyone is aware of CO2 emissions, Methane and Nitrous Oxide are also huge contributors to the problem, and livestock and dairy industries are the largest contributor of both emissions.  Methane is 20 times as powerful as CO2, and Nitrous Oxide is 300 times more powerful!
Simply by living a vegan lifestyle, I have cut my contribution to greenhouse emissions down to 1/7.  That just has to make you feel good!

Last topic: deforestation.
Wait, deforestation?  I thought this was a vegan blog...
When we think of the livestock industry, we don't usually think of the rainforest.  But here's a scary fact: for each hamburger we eat, we're contributing to the destruction of rainforest.  We're a growing society, and overcrowding is an issue we've all heard about.  So if we're overcrowded, but our consumption of meat keeps increasing, what are we to do?  One solution is to find new land, uninhabited by humans, to build new farms!  One infographic I've included below suggests that for each pound of beef produced on these farms on cleared out rainforest land, 660 pounds of living matter (plant species, insect species, birds, reptiles, mammals) is destroyed.  Now I like insects just about as much as the average American female, but I also recognize that they have a function.  Cockroaches and spiders are disgusting, but I know that they eat other bugs.  Any kid whose seen the movie Fern Gully knows that the rainforest is a delicate ecosystem and every creature serves a purpose to keep the community strong.  If we're bulldozing these creatures, we're destroying an entire ecosystem that took centuries to develop, and possibly killing off whole species we haven't even discovered yet!  Who thinks that's a good idea?  Not me.
Another source suggests that 30% of the earth's land mass (that's the equivalent of Asia, and more than the moon) is used for raising animals for food.  Wait, didn't we just mention overcrowding?  If 30% of the land is being used by livestock, then wouldn't cutting that back a little open up new land for us to live on? 

Okay, I'll shut up for now, and let you digest some of this.  I know it took me a while to comprehend some of these facts.  I still can't totally comprehend why more people aren't aware of this stuff! Everyone wants to save the environment and do good things for Mother Earth... until it means they can't eat a damn hamburger.