Smoothie Classico

I am currently on a quest to be a little bit less of a porkchop than I have become. So far, despite starting to go to the gym and paying some attention to what I eat for the first time in my life, the results are: slow.

I have lost about five pounds thus far, which is exciting--I'm not sure I've actually ever lost any weight before in my life--the scale has basically always been a one-way-street. However, as I've A. set my handy-dandy Livestrong online weight loss calculator to have me losing 1 lb/week and have been doing a fairly decent (not 100%, but still) job of sticking to things and B. have been doing this for a couple of months now, you'd expect maybe I would have lost more than five lbs.

This may be because last week when I was fiddling with said handy-dandy weight loss calculator, it suddenly realized I should be eating more like 1400 calories/day instead of 1800. I'm not certain why it had this stunning realization; it had the same info in it now as it did before, but voila, there you go.

Anyhow, as a pretty champion eater, I have discovered that 1800 calories/day is pretty hard to manage, so I'm not looking forward to 1400. First of all, I have a tendency to try to eat as lightly as I can all day so I can pig out at dinner. I'm pretty sure this isn't how it's supposed to work, but more importantly: at 1800 cals/day I get hungry--a lot. What do you do when you get hungry?! Josh says you just deal with it for a few weeks and eventually it subsides. I think this is crazy.

What this is a long way of saying is: I've been on a search for low-calorie, filling snacks since I find myself getting ravenous between meals. My current plan is: smoothies.

I mean, they're basically just fruit and yogurt. And sure, that's sugar, but still, it's pretty good for you and I'm hoping at least some of them are less calorific than my more preferred cheese and crackers type snacks. Plus, Josh is really great at making them, and I often have him make them for me and they do a good job of tiding me over for hours.

The problem with that is: I can't very well have Josh come home from work all the time to make me smoothies whenever I get the yen. I can, however, work my way through a smoothie book I got him (one I think I saw at Jamba Juice, might I add). One that I'm pretty sure he never used because he has an innate knowledge of smoothies that supersedes any silly book.

I, however, do not have that innate knowledge. But I have the book. Specifically: Smoothies: 50 Recipes for High-Energy Refreshment by Mary Corpening Barber, Sara Corpening, and Lori Lyn Narlock. And last Friday before we headed down to San Diego for our Xmas festivities, I took the book out for its maiden spin: "Smoothie Classico."

"Smoothie Classico" is your basic banana-strawberry-orange smoothie. In so doing, I learned the following things:

1. The Corpening sisters and their buddy Ms. Narlock like to give their smoothies weird, cutesy names. Is this because they are weird, cutesy people? Is this because they think it will make the book sell better? I'm guessing both. They are, after all, the type of women who write a smoothie book. Anyway, we're all going to have to struggle to ignore their stupid names during this voyage.

2. The ladies also have a weird predilection for buying fresh fruit and then freezing it in order to blend it for the smoothie. Why? Why is buying it fresh and then freezing it any better than just buying the frozen fruit? Why does the fruit need to be frozen at all for smoothie-fication? Can't it just be fresh?

Questions questions, so many questions these ladies leave me with. At this point, as a smoothie novice I am just doing their bidding, which means going to the grocery, buying fruit, and then feeling silly as you prepare it per their weirdo specifications ("peel banana, freeze it whole, then slice the frozen banana before blending"). I'm pretty sure it's just some sort of bizarre eating disorder sorority group-think cult decision and not actually going to make the smoothie any better, but for now I'm giving it a shot. The upshots being that it takes lots of extra time and forethought to make sure you've doctored up and frozen all the fruit well before you could know you want a smoothie, and at least banana-wise, slicing frozen versus fresh seems to really greatly enhance your chances of cutting off a finger, so that's always good.

Also: I'm pretty sure my blender is pissed at the frozen fresh fruit business, too, as it all but refused to work when I was mixing up this guy. It looked at me like, "Why? Haven't I been good to you?" but I persisted and finally it gave in and blended, but it's looking like the Weird Sisters' smoothies might be the death of it.

Anyhow, to the smoothie (or "Smoothie Classico") itself: It was good--your usual, traditional strawberry banana flavor smoothie--with the caveat that it was thick as all get out. So thick, in face, it needed eating with a spoon and not sipping like a drink. Quite surprising given that there wasn't anything I would imagine is a thickening agent in it--just fruit and OJ. I suspect that was the result of the fresh-frozen business, actually. As for me, I was fine with it, kind of liked it even. Josh prefers his smoothies less thick, so maybe we are in opposite world.

Eat me if you dare.

"Smoothie Classico"

1 cup orange juice
1 cup hulled and quartered fresh strawberries, frozen (why? we don't know!)
2 fresh bananas, frozen and sliced (ideally without part of your thumb)

Pour the OJ into a blender. Add the strawberries and bananas. Blend until smooth.

Serves: 2

Calories: ? Of course the Weird Sisters don't tell us the calorie count. Why would they help us like that? Luckily, I can enter the info into my trusty, overspecific Livestrong calorie calculator and tell you that the calories are somewhere in the neighborhood of 250/serving. Not horrible, not amazing, either.