Janathon day 9: what a plank... Plus - green smoothies

Written Jan 9, 2014, tagged under post,injury,janathon,orchestra,plank,smoothie,vitamix

Something I've done over the last few days has made my left leg hurt, so running is off the cards for a few days to give it a chance to recover. What with today being so busy, and my orchestra rehearsal this evening (I play flute, and we have a next weekend), I haven't had time for much exercise today. So I managed a token plank of 1 minute 17 seconds, just to keep my record up...

While I have a minute, let me tell you about my green smoothie! We recently bought a Vitamix blender, arguably the most expensive impulse purchase we've ever made... We'd been thinking about getting a juicer for ages, but saw one being demo-ed in our local John Lewis, and realised it ticked all our boxes. In particular, it leaves all the fibre in when you blend fruit, rather than just leaving you with sugar-water. (The fact it can also make soup and ice cream were nothing to do with it!)

It is brutal, and allows us to bash out tasty green smoothies really easily, and it's good to clean too. So - here's my recipe:

1 kiwi
1 banana
1 apple
1 avocado
1 slice of lemon
1 slice of lime
Loads of kale
Loads of spinach
Some more spinach, frozen (to make it nice and cold)
Some water
Possibly some Spirulina powder

I do minimal preparation - pretty well all of it goes in except for stones and unpleasant peels (kiwi, advocado and banana). The first picture shows everything about to go in...

About 30 secs of blending, starting slow and ramping to 11 (as it were), leaves us with a very yummy drink. I tend to add some ice into the mix as well, to make sure it's really cold (which always helps). The result is very ... green! The secret weapon is the lemon and lime slices - they lift it up nicely, making it really quite decent-tasting... We tend to keep in in the fridge, so it's always there for a boost when you need it.

Anyway, I hope you're all well! I'm off to bed now, at last...