Green Smoothies (or "You're eating what???")

Blame it on my cross country coach, Coach Woodward.  The guy was a madman who (we believed) ate dog food for breakfast and bullets for lunch.  He never seemed happy or satisfied, always on the edge of anger,  and more than a little on the crazy side.  In other words, he was the perfect cross-country coach.   He pushed us with an insatiable drive to go farther and faster, doing what we previously thought was impossible.   I'll forever hear his words echoing in my mind:  "Don't be a sissy!", "Don't be a whippin' post!"
Believe it or not, we all survived, and I think we all learned something about pushing ourselves beyond what we thought was possible.  That's a valuable lesson: to look at your limit, and be willing to see what lies beyond it.  And although I don't think we should be driven by fear or intimidation, there is some value in having that little voice echoing in your head, "Don't be a sissy!".   Long before any psychologists came up with the term "dialectic", Coach Woodward taught us the concept of "I've done the best I can, AND I must do better."  I credit the insanity of my old cross country coach for several things in my life which I may not have thought possible, and which others questioned how I could do them.  Even the words "cancer care-giver" seem so light and easy to say, but for anyone who's been there, they know there are some HUGE mountains that get crossed.   Far bigger than a measly six mile run in the rain.  Hah - sissy stuff!
I was confronted by that brute force intimidation recently when reading, of all things, a nutrition book on smoothies. I've been a fan of smoothies for years now, enjoying how easy they make it for anybody to get in your fruits.  But vegetables... that's a different story.   The conventional wisdom is that you "blend fruits, but have to juice or cook vegetables".   I learned that early on from some bad experiments I tried, and reading one of my favorite health gurus who admitted, "Green smoothies are nearly impossible to get down."  Ever look over the menu at Smoothie King?   You'll see about every fruit available, but hardly a single veggie.   And yet there is so much talk about the nutritional value of raw vegetables.  Sure, we can make salads, salads, and more salads, but that gets old.  And when I looked at my Vitamix, I felt constrained by that wall:  fruits only.  Well, carrots, and possibly even the occasional tomato.  But that's it.  "Green Smoothies" was an alien concept...
Until this past week.  I came across the book "The Green Smoothies Diet", and once again, I heard my old cross country coach slamming me with "Don't be a sissy!  Don't be a whippin' post!"   Only this time I heard that voice coming through this book on green smoothies.  And perhaps this time, a bit softer and more encouraging.  This author seemed confident that green smoothies, done right, were entirely possible and enjoyable.  So, we made a trip to the grocery store, collected what we needed, and brought it home for the grand experiment.  I whipped it all together, took a sip, and to my amazement, thought -- "This is ENTIRELY doable.  I can DO this!"   And within five minutes had downed my first green smoothie, containing about 15 servings of veggies.
Now for anyone scoffing at the need for such nutritional obsession, I'll forego the tons of arguments, other than to say, you just need to view your body as a machine.  Would you buy a porsche, bring it home and pour ketchup in the fuel tank?   I don't think so.  But for those already sold on the need for better health & nutrition, I heartily recommend this book: Green Smoothies Diet by Robyn Openshaw.
In it, the author gives several great ideas & tips for overcoming obstacles, and making this entirely doable.  I've never read it so clearly, and am excited about where this can go.  And once again, I'm that scrawny 15-year old, bent over in the rain and gasping for air at the end of a six-mile run, and looking up at my crazy Coach Woodward, hearing him say those priceless words, "See - I knew you could do it."

Hitting 40

I’m just weeks from hitting the big 40, and like clockwork, I am feeling anxiety about my life knocking on my door.   Questions about what I’ve accomplished, how much time I have left, and what is yet to be accomplished…

Unlike your stereotypical MLC (mid-life-crisis) victim, I feel no need to go out and buy a sports car.   What haunts me is TIME…that one chance to go back to school, forestalled by parenting responsibilities that seem to only increase as one crisis follows another.  Watching the years fly by so fast, as the window of opportunity grows smaller and smaller…

Arts & Crafts

My bride at work on the front porch, one early spring morning.

Love seeing her in my old jacket…

 

(This is actually a test of Windows Live Writer)