A blog about my mouth full of metal, some frankly delightful smoothie recipes and one motherfucking beast of a soup suggestion.
I realise this looks a lot like a health and fitness blog. It’s not a health and fitness blog.
There are plenty of health, fitness and beauty blogs and bloggers out there, and I’m more than happy to let them continue doing their jobs*, and instead, I like to see this post more as an act of solidarity with all the other smoothie-supping, straw-toting brace faces out there, who’ve said goodbye to almonds, chewing gum, apples (unless cut into bite-sized pieces) and a reasonable dental hygiene routine for a while: I salute you.
In fact, I was queueing behind a guy in the corner shop yesterday who asked for a straw with his Coca Cola**. The shop didn’t have any, I had a bag full. I apologised for eavesdropping and offered him one with a knowing smile…a knowing, unnecessarily wide smile, baring my braces (lets bear in mind my braces are on the backs of both my upper and lower teeth, so in order to bare them, you can imagine just how unnecessarily wide and goofy a smile I mean)… and he smiled right back, baring his. We’re in this together.
So yeah, I’m pretty late to the party on this one: most people I know sensibly had their braces in their teens, and all this stuff about needing to consume everything in liquid form at first, ideally through a straw, is old news. NEW NEWS, however, is the NutriBullet. So if you’ve got one (or any food processor/blender, in fact. Other appliances are available and are perfectly capable, and I’d actually probably prefer you used them over the extortionately priced and heavily celebrity-endorsed NB***, it’s just that it’s really easy to clean, I’ll give it that) here are some delicious fruit and veg smoothie combinations, slash food porn pics. Knock yourselves out.
SOUPER FUNTIMES
I’ve also been cooking up big pots of soup. I’d recommend roasting up butternut squash, red peppers, red onions and lots of garlic in olive oil (don’t worry about them getting a bit burny or the oven being too hot, it actually gives a nice flavour) while soaking mixed lentils and steaming over them some chopped carrots; Fry up white onions, a tiny finely sliced red chilli and good sprinkling of paprika in butter in a big pan until soft, chuck everything else in (once they’re all soft from their respective cooking methods), top up with boiled up stock (I like a meaty stock cube, even though it’s a vegetable soup, just sayin), bring to the boil then turn down and simmer the fuck out of it with a lid on. Rip tons of fresh coriander into it then whizz around the pan with one of those hand food processors, but don’t make it too smooth, chunky is best (or if you don’t have one, don’t bother. Again, chunky is best). Season with salt and pepper. Eat it.
What I would not recommend with regards making this soup is burning yourself.
*their jobs which, granted, may or may not be fitness, health and beauty blogging, it’s not traditionally a super-powered, high-paying job that can constitute a 9-5, unless you’re already rich or you’re Zoella, and the less said about her here the better.
**True, if he cares about his teeth, he really shouldn’t be drinking Coca Cola. I didn’t say this, I wanted it to be a nice moment.
***I can say this because I did not buy said NutriBullet, I borrowed it for Lingual Braces Phase 1 from someone who now wants it back, claiming he cannot get the fruits and vegetables he needs because he does not have his contraption to smoothiefy them. This is a real shame, and also bullshit. He can, the idea of simply eating them just hasn’t occurred to him yet. I still love him.
What do you think?