i have to admit, i was not excited about today's smoothie.  apples and celery are not my favorite things, plus i was worried about my poor blender, lol, as they are both rather crunchy.  but at least nothing was frozen, so the blender was actually okay with it, and i liked it better than i expected to.  i used gala apples, and it was the heart of the romaine so i used the rest of it, so more than 4 leaves, but many of them quite tiny.  it was pretty tasty.  quite thick - i maybe ought to have added a little more liquid, actually.  i read the recipe and i still feel sort of meh about it, but the flavor deserves a higher rating than that - let's say 4 out of 5 stars.

i'm feeling quite sad that this is the last day of the smoothie challenge.  yes, i can continue to make them, and with more freedom, which could be fun, but i will miss the daily emails with recipes and tips.  i printed out the recipes for the 7-day juicing challenge.  the structure is different - the handout has seven juice recipes, and you can do a different one each day or one juice for all seven days, or however the heck else i feel like doing it, lol.  i will start with a juice that i have all the ingredients for, since the challenge starts on wednesday and i won't feel like shopping on tuesday.  i still have to drag the juicer out of the cupboard, and figure out where the fuck i can put it.  i have very little counter space in the kitchen, and now that i have the blender out, well, i just have no idea, lol.  i am having conversations with myself about getting rid of the microwave, or things like, 'if i quit eating bread, i can get rid of the toaster.'  *sigh*

well, once you add the spinach, this smoothie is pink only in your dreams, lol.  this smoothie is quite lovely.  strawberry and mango go very well together, and i even tasted the mango a little bit.  had a delicate, slightly tangy, tropical flair.  much to my surprise, i am coming to the conclusion that spinach is my favorite green for smoothies, lol.  today i used frozen mango and mostly fresh strawberries, though i didn't have quite a cup, so i had to add a few frozen to make up the balance.  that's my preference - half the fruit frozen gives the smoothie a nice texture (and doesn't overtax the blender, though i still added about half the ingredients first with the water and then added the rest).

imagine my dismay at reading this recipe this morning and realizing i only had one banana left.  and i read it last night, and could have run out for more bananas, if only my brain had remembered at that point that i only had one left.  i debated substituting avocado for one of the bananas, but that would have violated my prime directive in this challenge, which has been to leave the recipes pretty much as is for this first round.  the tinkering and messing around will come later, lol.  in the end, i decided to make half the recipe because i'm meeting friends for an early lunch today anyway.

this is an incredibly delicious smoothie.  banana and cucumber go really well together - i noticed this in one of the other recipes.  and have i mentioned yet how much i love frozen bananas?  apparently the freezing kind of breaks down the sugars, and they are so sweet and cold and delicious.  i confess i always lick my fingers after i throw them in the blender - yum!  yeah, so anyway, i used a heaping 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, which next time i will have an even heavier hand with the cinnamon - i love the stuff.  for the cayenne, since i was halving this, we were down to 1/16th of a teaspoon, so i just gave it a few vigorous shakes, so i guess i actually have no idea how much i used.  enough to give it a little burn, though, that's for sure, which i'm happy about.  people have been complaining of sore throats lately, and my glands were feeling a little bit tender, so i figure if anything was trying to set up housekeeping in my throat, this burned it the hell out, lol.  if you don't like hot, you could always decrease or omit entirely the cayenne, i suppose, but i loved the little kick it gave this smoothie.  also, as i was dumping in the chia seeds, it occurred to me perhaps i should have halved that as well, but i didn't.  the only problem with this smoothie was that since i halved the recipe, there wasn't as much to enjoy.  *pouts*  also, i now have a poor little 1/4 of a cucumber left in my fridge, lol.

btw, in a recent email about this challenge, they shared a list of how to prepare the different fruits used in these recipes.  if anybody is interested, let me know and i will post that.

for the second time, i forgot an ingredient.  this time it was the lemon, but i realized it before i'd drunk very much and i hadn't rinsed out the blender yet because there was a little too much to fit into the glass at first, so i dumped it back in and added the lemon juice, which did add a nice complexity.  it was a really pretty pale green color, sort of seafoam.  this one was pretty good, though not as good as the very similar one that had mint instead of ginger.  i'd make it with mint first if i had it, and if i had no mint but had ginger, then i'd make this one.  and definitely remember the lemon!