Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Jumping on the Green Smoothie Bandwagon

Have you tried green smoothies?

I hadn't yet until this morning. We have a lot of kiwis right now, and I decided to toss some into the blender. I also threw in an old-ish pear, a few spinach leaves (I've read about them in green smoothies and wanted to try, but only tossed in a couple in case the texture was off putting) and a dash of cranberry juice. Not following any particular recipe, just tossing in what I had and thought might taste good together.

And guess what? It was actually pretty good! The spinach texture was certainly different from the Jamba Juice style smoothies I was used to, but not at all off putting. And I couldn't even taste it over the kiwi and pear.

I unfortunately didn't take a picture, but as I experiment a bit more with fruit smoothies maybe I'll share some more recipe combinations.

If you want to replicate what I threw together, I used:
-2 kiwis
-1 pear
-about 4 large spinach leaves
-cranberry juice (I didn't measure, but I would guess it was roughly 1/4 cup)

Just blend it together, and enjoy!

If you have any favorite smoothie combinations, I would love to hear them. I'm always looking for healthy and easy snacks.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

And I'm Back

Have I really not posted at all in 2014? Wow...somehow this January has just flown by!

It's been a hectic and stressful month, with build/paint, tech and opening of Grapes of Wrath at Hillbarn Theatre. As is normal in the theatre world, everything was stressful right up until opening night when it all came together. This was a truly wonderful group of people to work with, from the director, other designers, production team, and each cast member. I am so glad that I had the chance to return to Hillbarn as a designer, after volunteering there as master carpenter/scenic artist for the year before I started grad school. I can't wait to work there again!

These last few days since opening have been spent catching up on all my house projects that I wanted to get done this winter. We gave the old multi-colored floor lamp from the office to some friends who moved (young girls got their own room), and replaced it with our first major lighting purchase ever. Yikes, who knew that nice lamps could cost $100 a piece! I'll be blogging about that in a couple days...just need to get the desks clean so I can take some nice pictures. And some sun wouldn't hurt either so that we can get some natural light in the room.

I've also been cooking up a storm the last couple days. Baked some sourdough bread and chocolate persimmon muffins today; slow cooker chicken for dinner tonight; fennel and tortellini was dinner last night.

In light of the drought here in California, I'm also planning on collecting conservation tips to share weekly, starting next Monday. I'll start off focusing on water conservation, but I'd love to keep it going as a regular weekly thing so I'm sure I will branch out.

Well, that's a quick run down of what I've been up to this month, and what I'm planning on posting here in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!