shake and bake

Disclaimer: this post has nothing to do with baking

All right, y'all; I have made some adjustments on my breakfast routine without notifying my loving fan base, an act both unprecedented and unheard of. Let's remedy that! 

By the way, said loving fan base appears to be growing based on the commenting traffic here lately. If you've chanced upon me from some obscure Google search or any other means, welcome! Imma try my best to reply to/acknowledge comments as I can.

Back to breakfast: my smoothie bowl routine is still in place, but now with a few improvements. First of all, sister got a little tired of the tiny frozen fruit selection and quantity at her neighborhood grocer. I shelled out quite a bit for mangoes and more mangoes week after week before I got to thinking "this goes against my grain, there must be a better way". Cue Pinterest! As a research based individual, I read tons and tons of blog posts from money saving mamas about buying up produce in season and freezing it for later use and then proceeded to execute my own version of that very thing. I've been freezing bananas for a while, but have now expanded my arsenal. Grapefruit is super cheap at this time of the year and I have a ton of it frozen and ready to go. I've also found vacuum sealed steamed beets on sale and frozen those puppies to throw in the mix and liven things up now and again. Basically, any produce I can find at a good price I plan to buy up and freeze up. The result is a happier me for feeling like I am (a) saving money, and (b) liberated from the frozen fruit packaging man (anti-establishment, what can I say...), as well as (c) a colder, thicker shake.

If you're interested, the secret is to freeze everything in a single layer until frozen solid (I use a freezer paper lined cookie sheet for large quantities and small quantities I just spread out flat in a Ziploc freezer bag), and then it's good to toss in a bag and shove into a corner of the freezer without everything becoming a single mass.

My second improvement is...protein powder. Yeah, I'm serious. Like, meathead, musclehead, gymrat, bro-tein powder. Who'da thunk?! For the longest time I've written protein powder off because it kind of serves as the last nail in my "I am serious about fitness" coffin, something that I know seems silly to avoid, but when the majority of your life has been a profession of how much you dislike exercising, it's kind of a big step to embrace the change. But here I am, publicly, internetly, boldly professing a me that eats right, exercises, uses protein powder, and, yes, enjoys all of that. I use vanilla powder so that the tastes of the different fruit combos still shines through, because flavor profiles are exciting and important to me. The result to my breakfast is a consistently-of-good-consistency shake that keeps me fuller for longer. There's something to that protein stuff! Don't tell Jeff I said so ;)

Before anyone doubts my true-ness to self after that last paragraph, I accidentally tore the entire label off of the tub of protein powder and it was really white and bare so I decided to decorate it with Star Wars stickers. It turned out even way better than I expected because the powder looks like either sand or snow and creates a landscape for the various battles playing out between the Republic and the Rebels (depending on whether you prefer Tatooine or Hoth on any given day).

Oh, and one more improvement is that I now remember to top everything off with ground flax. So there ya have it! I made one for Jeff the other day and he even went so far to say that the student might have become the master in shake making. Excuse me while I brush this dirt off my shoulders.