Green Machine Breakfast Shake

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Drink your greens!

Drink your greens!

There was a glorious period of time in the mid-2000s when 4 of my beer guzzling friends from The Blind Tiger and I started The Burger Club after reading a list of NYC’s best 100 burgers.  We decided it would be a good idea to check each place off the list once a week and we even gave ourselves names. There was Professor Patty, Pete Meat, Medium Ray, Philthy McNasty, Jew C. Licious, and me, Madame Presidente which I later changed to Greazy Weezy.  Considering none of us had smart phones at the time, there was no FB, Twitter or Instagram to document every waking moment of one’s life and we were too drunk and stuffed with meat to ever start a blog, the only proof that we actually ate burgers every week is Professor Patty’s cholesterol report from 2005.

It was at this time that he, née Matthew, started in on the kale shakes and I soon got hooked.  I figured that if I was going to eat a drippy burger once a week for the following 2 years, I needed to combat it with a smoothie full of nature’s scrub brush.  The shakes have taken many forms over the years with a variety of different greens, fruit, yogurt, milks, supplements and they even have different monikers depending on my mood; Shit Shake, Ass Blaster, Sludgie, Smoove Move, etc..  I try to drink one more mornings than not and considering all the beer I drink, the least I can do is start off my day with a buttload of nutrients.

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

1 cup spinach

1 cup kale

½ cup fresh parsley

10 mint leaves

1 green apple, cored and roughly chopped

1 cup green grapes

½ cup plain low-fat greek yogurt

1 cup almond milk

1 tbsp. flax powder

Agave, to taste

Salt, to taste

Directions:

Put all ingredients into a blender and process until smooth.  Add water and/or ice to desired consistency.

Creamy Avocado Milkshake

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I have been craving ice cream and milkshakes lately.  Most likely because as a girl who grew up in the Midwest, June signifies the beginning of summer to me; warm weather, baseball games and the ice cream man.  I grew up in a small town called Waterford, just south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and fortunately the main ice cream parlor in town was at the end of my block.  Uncle Harry’s it was called and a homemade waffle cone full of Mint Oreo was always my go-to. It is still there and it’s exciting to see high school friends post pics of their kids on Facebook extolling the virtues of such an awesome old-school establishment.

On one of my recipe development missions for Kin Community, I needed to come up with some beverages and thought about this avocado shake I had in Singapore years back and how refreshing it was on a hot, sweaty day.  It was sweet, creamy, a lovely pale green and utterly delicious.  So, guided by the memory of Uncle Harry’s and my love of avocados, here’s what I came up with.  It’s a mighty fine shake that I suppose is somewhat healthy (if you’re into that sorta thing) and your friends and family will think it’s super cool.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 ripe medium avocadoes

½ tin sweetened condensed milk

1 cup milk (whatever type you prefer- cow, goat, almond, soy, coconut)

2 cups ice

Directions:

Put all the ingredients into the pitcher of a blender and process until smooth.