Friday, February 15, 2019

Double-Green Pear Smoothie


My loves! You know what the word smoothie means. I know you do. It means that my normal beer-and-cheese diet, the one that's typically seasoned with ginormous crunchy handfuls of good salty bff tortilla chips, is on an eensy little hiatus. A winter little hiatus where I try to live like a person who is not teetering on an addicty tightrope that stretches between the seven a.m. HUZZAH! of caffeine and the five o'clock sharp HUZZAH! of alcohol. A few weeks where I say things like, "Is it just me, or are these yeast walnuts actually the most delicious thing you ever tasted?" (It's just me!) 

To be fair, Michael was trying to share his Shake Shackstravaganza with Ben, but it showed up in my feed. Because NOBODY WANTS ME TO BE LIVING MY CLEAN LIFE.
"What should I label this dressing?" Michael asks, and I have to say, "Cashew Caesar." (With nutritional yeast!) Three different kinds of nuts are soaking in my refrigerator at all times, like tragic drowned things. I am staining our blender with the turmeric I'm adding to my crazy good lattes. You know. Like this.

Mmmm! Yellow foam! Like something from a poisoned beach!
Anyhoo, longtime readers might be saying, "Why February?" And thank you for asking! It's because our Ben was home through January, and I couldn't bear to be abstemious in the presence of someone so devoted to the culinary hedonism of our family. (He's on some sort of al-fredo cleanse.) Hence now. Sigh. Here I am: clean, Benless, and trudging in the slush. But loving the spring light! And feeling annoyingly great, tbh. Plus, you can't complain about pretend problems you invented for yourself. Or can you? For more clean recipes, Google "Ben and Birdy" with "clean." I should make a category in the recipe index, but I have about as much energy as the kind of person who thinks a leaf of kale might make a fun snack.


In other news, I read this book, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, and it was breathtakingly good. I stayed up all hours with my headlamp, crying. I also read, and loved, The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. 


And this book! I have a piece in it! So fun! Except I made myself cry, reading it out loud in Boston on Monday. Because I am apparently the kind of person who is moved to tears by my own writing. Which, then, made me laugh. While I was crying. Because #kalesnack.

Okay, okay, the smoothie! I have suddenly taken to walnuts--their milky, savory richness--even though everyone else here hates them, and also they seem to burn these weird troubling craters onto my tongue, which might be some kind of sign that I'm choosing to ignore. You could totally use almonds or cashews instead! But I do love the walnuts here with the warmth of the vanilla and the bright, fragrant pearness of the pear. Also? The greens are optional. You can just stuff them in your mouth while the smoothie is blending, get them all nice and choked down before you even sit down with what would otherwise be a simply lovely fruity drink. In which case this is a Single-Green Pear Smoothie.

Double-Green Pear Smoothie
Makes 1 serving

Blend on high until very smooth and all the date nubbins and but chunks and leaves have fully disappeared:

1 little handful of raw walnuts (2 tablespoons?), ideally soaked in water overnight, especially if your blender isn’t super-powerful (or other, less punishing nuts if you prefer)
1 cored and cut-up pear
1 large handful of baby spinach or torn kale
A couple of ice cubes
1 cup of cold water
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1 pitted date
a pinch of salt

Drink right away!

Have a wonderful weekend, my darlings.

29 comments:

  1. Have you read "The 57 Bus" by Dashka Slater? It seems like it might be something you'd like.

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    1. No, but I just put a hold on it at the library! Thank you for the recommendation.

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  2. Oh hello!!! I have been missing your presence on Twitter, etc. so much that I came over here to see if I'd missed a post last week, and actually I'd missed that piece on Cup of Jo about raising teenage boys, so I ended up having a good weep. Anyway hi and glad you're around! I can't believe I missed you at an event in Boston, drat.

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    1. Oh, thank you, dear Kate F.! And yes, drat. You missed me talking about eating a tuna and potato chip sandwich in my swimsuit on the beach!

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  3. Replies
    1. Ha ha ha! I think I have to leave it.

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  4. Omg I love you. That is all. :)

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  5. Eleanor7:07 PM

    BUT CHUNKS! The best typo ever???

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    1. I love that everyone noticed this but me! I had to look hard to find it. Ha ha ha! I love you people so much.

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  6. I am so glad to find a use for all the but chunks I have here! Also, I realize we have never met, but I had a dream LAST NIGHT that you and I were playing newspaper mad libs in a yogurt commercial from 1993. And then here you are in my fb feed! I don’t know what to make of it.

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    1. Ha ha ha! "newspaper mad libs in a yogurt commercial from 1993" has almost surely never been written before in the history of the world!

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  7. Just read your piece after getting the book, and it made me cry too. Goddamn cancer. Also made me wish I could smell those Bonnie Bell lip smackers again, whle listening to some Madonna and feeling so, so cool.

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  8. Anonymous7:47 AM

    I want to feel like a smoothie, but I feel like I have to go to Shake Shack right now. That looks amazing. --Cathy K

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  9. I'm so glad you are back and I can totally relate to your not wanting to cleanse while Ben was home! I also teeter on the addicty tightrope of coffee in the a.m. and alcohol in the p.m. but if you can hold off til 5:00 - you are doing great, in my book! LOL! I just ordered your book - On Being40'ish, even though I am 50'ish....can't wait to read it on my kindle. xoxoxoxo

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    1. Oh geez, Dolly, I'm 50ish too, god knows! xoxo

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  10. Anonymous6:13 AM

    Oh I missed you the past 6 weeks, dearest Catherine. Thank you for making me laugh so hard this cold, dark morning. Now I am going to go off to my job as a school librarian and when I hand a kiddo "One Mixed-up Night" as I so often do, I am going to say: "this lady is such an amazing writer that she made Mrs.T blow coffee out her nose!" XXOO

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    1. Ha ha ha! Thank you, dear Mrs. T.

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  11. Anonymous8:31 AM

    Hi Catherine. This article in the Washington Post made me think about your writing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daughter-asked-me-stop-writing-about-motherhood-heres-why-i-cant-do-that/?utm_term=.4601fbf862de. I have to say, I agree with the majority of posters in the comments section to the article. Perhaps Ben and Birdy are fine with the public airing of their childhood moments, but does that make it right? Were they able to consent to this at such a young age? BTW, the author of the WaPo article has subsequently made her blogs about her children private, perhaps in response to the comments she received. Some food for thought and reflection.

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    1. I would have to assume that Catherine has discussed these issues with her children. She seems to discuss EVERYTHING with her children, and is respectful of their feelings and their rights. Even if not, her kids are in their late teens, so I think that ship has long ago sailed.

      Regardless, did I miss a discussion on this topic? Did Catherine ask? Why are we discussing this now?

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    2. Thank you, Sara (wagons circled). And Anonymous, honestly your comment just makes me roll my eyes. Not because those aren't valid questions. They are, although I've thought and written about them at length, and publicly. But I'm never in love with anonymous public shaming masquerading as just a shrugging "food for thought" kind of intervention.

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    3. Anonymous1:12 PM

      This is such a silly comment. Catherine wrote about parenting and her kids in a thoughtful, compassionate, and respectful way while her kids were young, and then stopped as soon as their lives became too private to share. I don't even see the connection. -- Anonymous #2

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    4. Anonymous8:43 PM

      "Anonymous 1:12 PM": who decides when a life becomes "too private to share"? You? Children aren't possessions of their mothers, nor are they extensions of them. Children have a right to privacy, and it is a mother's responsibility to protect it.

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  12. Yeah, I rolled my eyes at that comment too.

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  13. I have a hopefully more cheerful comment. I just saw a description in the NYT about a new game called Wingspan. It made me immediately think about all the cool board games I have found out about here. Wondering if you and your family have ordered or tried that out yet.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/science/wingspan-board-game-elizabeth-hargrave.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

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    1. I just read that same article! Super interested. . .

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  14. That would be great slightly icy.

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