do you shake?

alright kids, i give in.

i shall begin the duty of sharing with you some recipes of the foods that i consume and some for the foods that i do not consume (being the food that i make for my client at work, who happens to love lots of butter, cream, and meat. anything and evertyhing that has to do with unadulterated gastronomical pleasure.)

we're gonna start off simple and plain, mainly because that's how i've been starting my days off lately. the wife and i are on the "body for life/FIT" kick pioneered by the phillips bro's (and here) and thus, the day starts out with 500ml of spring water, right out of bed. on the whole water topic, if you're gonna buy bottled water, i personally find the "FIJI" brand (spring water from actual said island) to be the absolute best in quality, consistentcy, and clarity of taste. it's a little more expensive and a bit hard to find sometimes, but well-worth the effort. something funny must be happening on that island.................well duh! i mean DA!

i drink Fiji water almost exclusively and will be until we move in to our new house in a couple of months. when we do, we're having a reverse osmosis filtering system installed in the kitchen and will be going with that instead. cheaper of course in the long run, but essentially more sustainable. even though bottles are recyclable, we simply can't go on using up as much plastic as we have been as a planet.

SO. the morning blend and i ain't talkin 'bout kaffa.

1) 100 ml of whey protein isolate, or perhaps a vegetable variety if you swing that way
2) 1 cup of almond milk
3) 1 tsp of high quality wild flower liquid honey
4) heafty pinch of ground cardamon
5) double hefty pinch of ground cinnamon
6) 1.5 cups of blueberries

method: blend ingredients 1-5 first, the add the berries. a handheld wand blender will fine but a bar blender may get you a smoother product.

now, the original recipe calls for 1 cup of raspberries and 0.5 cup of bluberries. however, i am a bigger fan of the flavour and greater sweetness of the bluberry so i just eliminate the wrath of the rasp. which is also why i have added the cardamon and cinnamon to the mix - cardamon is a personal fave in the spice dept. (absolutely stunningly fantastic when added to a shot of espresso!) and the cinnamon is one of the most suitable addendums to blueberries in general - so much so that you might even have a hard time identifying/isolating the flavour of the cinnamon in the final product.

if you're using frozen berries instead of fresh, the final product will generate more viscosity and may require a spoon or 5 minutes to rest and thaw out a bit before consumption. as well, with frozen berries the honey is going to be a bit tricky to add because it will simply cease up around the blade of the blender due to the cold. you could probably bypass the honey altogether, but i simply enjoy the floral and aromatic aspects that it tends to contribute to the mix. i get honey from a friend of mine's father out on vancouver island - it's a big area for marajuana grow-ops so maybe the bees are feeding on the nectar of some questionable foliage and THAT"S why i like to add the honey.

go figure.

bluberry fields, forever.

~chef