Puree of Dinner

It is the hip thing to put food into a jar with blades and latch that puppy onto a motor for crushing, slashing, and pommeling the ingredients into creamy deliciousness that you drink as compared to chewing.  This allegedly makes it easier for your digestive system to grab on to superoxidants and nature's hidden magic since a blade whirling at ninja speeds does a better job of mastication than your teeth.  Oh; when I used the term "creamy deliciousness" I meant "creamy particleboard".

No matter how long I rev the blender/smoothie maker, the ingredients do not liquify to make it drinkable.  Bits and snips of peel, nibs, or fiber hang in the colloidal moosh, and it's like drinking applesauce with a handful of wood tossed in.  How does this benefit me, what am I getting out of this torment?  I haven't more energy; there has not been any weight loss other than the two pounds which disappeared the next weigh-in.  What I do have is washing out the crevices and blades a few times a day, and shopping.  Shopping for stuff to whip into submission.

As thyroid glands are problematic in my family, (besides this county being one of the highest in the country for thyroid cancer...we have leftovers from the Manhattan Project buried all over), I am supposed to limit cruciferous vegetables to three servings a week.  To eliminate the fiddlefaddle that confuses the thyroid, you are to steam the vegetables first, mostly meaning the kale.  It would make sense to get organized and steam the whole bunch, freeze, and then break off chunks as I go.  Subsequently, I rinse off the leaves, nuke it for half a minute, and toss it into the rest of the sludge.   I have yet to look this up, this miracle vegetable, to see what it does for the system.  I will, truly, I function on information.  It's just so dang bitter, and the green particles float in with the bananas, cherries, oranges, carrots, apples, nibs, nuts, and oatmeal which I toss together.  Next time you rake leaves, chew on one.  That's what kale is like.  And it's not going away.

To make this more palatable, I bought the immensity-sized canister of some sort of protein drink that tastes like it's made of peas but is supposed to turn you into a sidewalk-chewing animal, capable of lifting a Buick while computing spherical trig.  Not lovely green peas that roll around on your plate and get stuck in the mashed potatoes, but field peas, brownish things filled with more fiber than a ball of twine.  Vanilla! Flavored! yelps the advertising.  Really.  I get it down.

And did I say brown?  Yup.  Maybe it's because of the oxidation which takes place with bananas and apples, but everything comes out brown.  Sometimes I add a nut butter, but I have yet to make anything which looks the color of the photos in the recipe booklet.  Clear greens, fresh as new blades of grass; purple hues with whispers of blueberries and summer, oranges, pinks, whites; all become varied tones of dirt.  What the heck.

When Mom was in the nursing home and not able to wear her teeth, everything they fed her had to go through an industrial blender.  Salad, goulash, chicken, all of it became adult baby food, easy for her to eat.  Try feeding your mother when she is being stubborn because they used canned tomatoes instead of fresh, I can tell.  No reasoning or lie, (yes, I lied to my mother..."I bought these at the store myself, Mom.  Bill the grocer said to say hi"), would get that mouth open.  Now, as I blur food together, I find it ironic that I can tell if the carrots were organic, or if the almond milk was the same brand as usual.  "See?", says Dorothy.

I am keeping it up, for it gets more fruits and vegetables into me than before, but are there other things that would be as good for you if pureed?  You already know that a hot smoothie is called soup,  a frozen one is pretend ice cream.  Dunkin' Donuts makes a caramel coffee blended with lord knows, and  hot chocolate from Starbucks gets the blender treatment as well.  How did drinks become so attached to electricity?  Does the motor noise make it more important?  Do not put any artsy squiggles of syrup on top, either.

Light lingers, and it's time for cat supper, which is canned puree of you don't want to know.  After, there is time for experimentation and research; need to find people to talk to, perhaps during business hours.  I have long hours before I can put down the brush tonight.  The air has warmed enough so that windows are cracked open, allowing fresh air to flow in; damp earth and burdock sprouts spill over the sill by their new spring aromas, this spring that we have waited so long for.

Sleep, tired one; the grass will grow slower and robins shall huddle in nests, waiting for their open-mouthed babies to be born.  Sleep without reason, you do not need one; the dreams that come are images of waking life without judgement or structure; they are hidden wishes.   Fall, then, into your own world of subconscious truth, hooded under the mantle of an unfolding fantasy.  Soft shadow, arrive.  Good night.