Shrapnel Smoothie

Tuesday of last week I hit up the Farmer's Market near Lunken Airport. If you've never been over there and you live on the Eastside of Cincinnati, it is worth your trip. I'm not really into all the organic stuff, Lord knows I have a serious love for junk food, but I DO love supporting the 'little guy.' I would much rather buy produce from a local farmer than from the grocery store, just because I like supporting small businesses.

So on this particular Farmer's Market trip, I was looking to buy peaches for Isaiah (the boy has a major sweet tooth and will only eat veggies if I add fruit...) I ended up buying peaches, green beans, 1 bunch of kale, 1 bunch of mustard greens, and 1 dozen eggs- all for under $12!

Now fast forward to yesterday. The peaches are nearly gone, the eggs are half gone. The kale, the green beans, and the mustard greens all sit, waiting to be consumed.  D'oh. So, I cooked up the green beans and put them in our dinner (which was a turkey casserole recipe creation that ended up being a total flop and really kind of gross.) I then washed and cut up the kale so I could make a smoothie! What better way to consume this 'superfood' (apparently kale is really really really good for you) than to chop it up and hide it with berries in a smoothie?! PERFECT.

So I load up the blender: 1 bag of frozen mixed berries. 1 bunch of pulverized kale (thank you food processor.) 1 frozen banana (why not?) 1 cup of orange juice. BLEND. But the blender wasn't blending. The berries at the bottom got blended but nothing else was moving. Hhmm. I shook the blender. Nothing. I took it off the base and turned the blender upside down. Still nothing. I grabbed my favorite wooden spoon, stuck it down through the little slit in the lid and *voila* things started moving! Alright! Everything was starting to look good, the berries had pulverized into a nice red-ish purple color, the kale was mixing well (aka it actually looked edible. Er... drinkable?)

And then my favorite spoon got too close to the blender blades. The sound was awful. Like the sound a tree branch makes when it is being fed through a wood chipper, all the wood splintering and cracking, very sad stuff. Cringing, I turn off the blender right as Daniel lovingly says "I was just about to tell you that a wooden spatula probably wasn't the best idea." Thanks babe.

Zoom in to the see wood chunk.

So now I have a ruined spoon AND a ruined smoothie. Ah but wait, Daniel pipes up from the kitchen table "Maybe it's not ruined. Maybe the wood broke off in one big chunk!" So I grab my ever faithful Pampered Chef mixing bowl and pour out the contents of the blender hoping to find the one wood chunk and salvage my smoothie. Pause. My brain says to me "I don't think this is worth it. The odds of that spoon breaking off in one chunk are pretty small. Let's taste the smoothie and see if it's worth the trouble." Good thinking brain, you do your job well. Friends, that smoothie was FOUL. Really sour tasting and very bitter. I maybe could have finished off an 8 oz glass but only because it was healthy. I would have chugged it to get all of the nutrients and none of the pleasure. And then I would have had brain freeze. So instead, I pitched it. And as I'm watching my concoction pour down the drain, I started saving the wood chunks. Oh my word, there were some serious wood chunks in this drink.  It killed me to dump it out, after all who wants to waste that much food?! But I would totally choose to waste $5 worth of food rather than spend the night in the ER after these wooden stakes ripped up my insides!

I could have swallowed that!

So, after all the wasted ingredients and the ruination of my favorite spoon, plus the time and effort associated with assembling the ingredients and washing the dishes, here's what I have learned. If I'm ever taken hostage by a group of vampires, I will make them my secret recipe Shrapnel Smoothie and then they will die from ingesting my tiny wooden stakes.

It could work.