The Green Smoothie

A couple of weeks ago I was crawling around searching for a coffee cup just past the crack of dawn. I was groggy but I was able to flip on the TV and navigate to channel 10, my NBC affiliate, for the Today Show. As I poured myself a cup of coffee and took my first sip my senses began to return to me. Some well quaffed gentleman was delivering a news story that by the sound of his voice and the seriousness of his cadence was somewhere on the importance scale of a meteor hurtling towards our planet roughly around the size of Mexico. My head cleared further as I listened…

“…But the custody of Michael Jackson’s children is still in question…”

Next up was a segment with Hoddah and Kathy Lee. “Really?” I said out loud to no one at all. My prognosis was not looking good for getting ANY relevant news of the day from the Today Show so I flipped over to channel 6, my local ABC affiliate to see what was happening on Good Morning America. There I found a health segment already in progress. All of the morning anchors were gathered around a wonderfully honed and Arobisized Beautiful Person. The table in front of them held bunches of green produce, some apples, lemons, pears, a blender and a glass filled to perfection with Green Smoothie. She, the Beautiful Person, turns out to be Nutritionist Kimberly Snyder and she appeared quite knowledgeable on the topic of detoxification of the human body and was firm in her stance that fad diets did not work. She suggested using the Green Smoothie as a meal replacement for three or more meals a week.

Hmm… I’m a fat guy in my forties and know that I have to do something to become less of a fat guy so I listened more intently; besides, who am I to argue with spandex? The recipe is as follows:

Green Smoothie Recipe:

1 1/2 cup of water
1 head of organic romaine lettuce, chopped
3-4 stalks of organic celery
1 organic apple, cored and chopped
1 organic pear, cored and chopped
1/3 bunch of organic cilantro
1/3 bunch of organic parsley
Juice of ½ fresh organic lemon

Combine the water and chopped head of romaine into your blender. Starting the blender on a low speed, mix until smooth. Gradually moving to higher speeds, add the herbs, celery, apple and pear. Add lemon juice last. Serve chilled or at room temperature. This recipe makes about four servings.

“Hmm…” I thought to myself, “I think I’m gonna try that out.” Last night I did the shopping and this morning I made my first blender full of Green Smoothie! After sampling said Green Smoothie I can not help but believe that half a bottle of vodka (your choice) would certainly improve the overall meal replacement experience. The recipe says that it can be served at “room temperature”, I do not subscribe to this theory. Chill it. If it is colder it will go down quicker. My first few sips reminded me of that story from the movie “Creepshow” where Stephen King turns into that plant – do you remember? Well if not, Gentle Reader, then know that the Green Smoothie is as close as you can get to performing photosynthesis yourself.

I do not mean to sound all together negative; the Green Smoothie is healthy and, since it is all pureed together, you really don’t have to digest it! Mmm… I’m going to stick with it though, Yours Truly knows that he has to do something and the Green Smoothie just may be a part of that.

I’ll let you know how it goes.


Recipe and picture of the Green Smoothie were found at http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Weekend/Story?id=8052138&page=1

Tim Russert

I was camping this weekend and learned second hand that Tim Russert has passed away. I was not near my computer so please forgive the lateness of this particular entry. Here is MSNBC’s coverage: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25145431/.

And now a small word about popular morning news programs namely ABC’s, “Good Morning America” and NBC’s, “Today Show”. For all intents and purposes that’s it for the big three networks – CBS has a morning show too but historically (or at least for the last 40 years) the program, in whatever incarnation it reinvents itself to be, trails far behind the others. Yes, for pop news shows in the morning it boils down to ABC and NBC. Both of them have headline and entertainment news and boatloads of fluff. While getting ready for work in the mornings for my Monday through Friday grind I watch for the weather forecast, to see which parts of the world are on fire, and to become, at least for a little bit, a little better informed.

But there is so much fluff to shovel. I do not blame the media completely for this – they are just giving the people what they want; which is capitalistic journalism. We, collectively, want to be entertained, in some cases, more so than we want to become informed. That’s why you see “Muffy the Water-Skiing Dog” or “What’s Brittany Doing Now?” right next to the economy, the obscene price of gas or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There’s a lot to sift through in the free American news media today – the morning rush most of all. Because of this fluff cutting (and no, that is not a euphemism for passing gas) over the years I have switched allegiances from “Good Morning America” to the “Today Show”. Oh sure there is fluff to sort through but the hosts do not appear as fake and as plastic as ABC’s do. I have a hard time watching phony people deliver phony news. It is irritating.

Enter the “Today Show”. This is where I first became aware of Mr. Tim Russert. Russet had a passion for politics that was not faked or phony – he loved what he did and that passion spilled over into the segments that he appeared. I’ve never watched “Meet the Press”, the show that he has hosted for the last “16 plus years” (thank you Wikipedia), but, as a casual viewer who was doing other things on Sunday mornings I always missed it. On the “Today Show”, however, I had the opportunity to see him come to life during the Democratic nomination bid between Obama and Clinton and it was a joy to behold. He and Matt Lauer would have discussions and you could feel the radiant excitement that Russert was exuding. It was fun to watch and it was informative. Russert’s passion was contagious.

My prayers go out to his family and friends at this time. Some people you just don’t replace as easily as others. Tim Russert was one of those people.

Godspeed.