spinach-not enough i might add...i only had about a cup left
cilantro
sea vegees
banana
dandelion
what was left of my strawberries...about 1/4 cup
1 stalk of kale
YUCK! this one had to be forced down...it was AWFUL LOL....i`m guessing it was my shortage on spinach cuz the past ones i`ve made have been YUMMY
patty

That does sound pretty nasty. LOL Sorry for the bad experience!

Sarah
[goingbananasblog.com]

i've done that a couple of times. put way too much spirulina with spinach leaves, onions, an overripe apple and a few other veggies. Bleh- it tasted like green pee swamp water. Not that I've ever had any of that, but I would imagine my awful smoothie tasted just like it. It was oily and stinky too...haha...maybe the spinach was bad. I didn't want to waste food, so I pinched my nose and drank it down. Next time I'll just create mulch in case the produce is really spoiled.

these posts made me laugh~
and I NEEDED to laugh today

yogi33 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> these posts made me laugh~
> and I NEEDED to laugh today

GOOD
patty

don't use to much mustard greens I did that once and the smoothie was so spicey it gave me indigestions. Now when I see mustard greens I walk way areound them like they are going to jump out and get me lol

pampam Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> don't use to much mustard greens I did that once
> and the smoothie was so spicey it gave me
> indigestions. Now when I see mustard greens I
> walk way areound them like they are going to jump
> out and get me lol

LOL i looked at mustard greens the other day and decided to go for dandelion
patty

I've had my share of bad smoothies too, BUT, just like Patty, I drank them anyway. I can't afford to waste good produce just because it doesn't taste good so I drink them anyways too! Thankfully, I haven't made a bad one in a while.

LOL. Patty & Roxeli, You're real troopers.

I made a terrible smoothie today out of a rotten pineapple. I thought the pineapple was okay -- smelled a bit fermented -- but it seemed edible. So I blended it up with strawberries, two papayas, and a young coconut. Eeee -- the entire affair was raunchy to the point of confession. I tried choking it down -- oh, I did -- but I finally gave up and glooped the heavy pink liquid down the sink and into public waterways.

Sometimes bad smoothies happen.

I could see that as a bumper sticker!!! "Bad smoothies happen." LOL

aww shane i`m sorry....what luscious fruit you had in it! i would`ve cried LOL
patty

When I use strawbs in smoothies I find I have to add loads to add even a slight sweet taste next to dark greens. Lettuce like romaine can save a too-dark-green smoothie though

My smoothie disaster was adding rainbow chard into a Gs.
It looked so beautiful, so full of goodness. Never again!
Far too bitter for me!
I stick to juicing it these days.

The other mistake i have made was trying to'rescue' a bad mix. I just ended up wasting more beautiful produce!

dewey Wrote:

> YUCK! this one had to be forced down...it was
> AWFUL

Why did you drink it?? l o l

carsick8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> add nori to anything an it becomes the worst thing
> you ever tasted

Cannot...stop...laughing....

something beautiful Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> dewey Wrote:
>
> > YUCK! this one had to be forced down...it was
> > AWFUL
>
> Why did you drink it?? l o l

i hate wasting food and it did have nutritional value so

i suffered through it LOL

carsick8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> add nori to anything an it becomes the worst thing
> you ever tasted


I never had nori. But try adding Black Strap Mollasses... YUCK.(not raw anyway, but still..yuck)


I gave up a long time ago on adding greens to smoothies. For me, it just can't be done. I can't go wrong with fruit..and even if I do..strawberries always fix it.

I have had those nasty ones too,ones that no matter how healthy they are you cant get them down.
I WAS WONDERING IF THERE WAS A CHART OR SOME REFERENCE ON WHAT THE PROPER MIX OF INGREDIENTS WOULD BE TO MAKE SMOOTHIES TASTE GOOD.
Like a list of do's and dont's.
Brian

"BAD SMOOTHIES HAPPEN" That should be printed on a t-shirt!

sometimes a frozen bad smoothie isn't so bad

esp on a hott day

Just when you thought it was safe to blend again...
Just when you thought all was well...

BAD SMOOTHIES... Sometimes they come back.

coming soon to a theater near you.
rated GS for gagging and spitting.

carsick8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> i was thinkin yesterday about banana and garlic ,i
> feel drawn to try it, would it be that bad??
> anyone have any experience of this unencharted
> territory


i say go for it and see what happens.
patty

Bad Smoothies Happen!!!

I'm going to write this on a t-shirt. I love it.

Yep, gulped a few down myself. Put a few in the fridge telling myself I'd drink them later.....Never did....LOL

Mary Kay

I've made plenty of really HORRIBLE smoothies. When I first got my Vita-Mix, I figured I could just "liquefy my salads", swish and "chew" them well and swallow them down. The theory was that the VitaMix would "chew" them so well that I'd be super-absorbing nutrients that my normal comparatively weak mastication couldn't release.

Well, I discovered that it was TRUE that the VitaMix releases all kinds of inner nutrients that teeth don't or can't release, at least not to the same degree... like the BURNING LIQUID FIRE of ground-up garlic or ginger, or the EXTREME BITTERNESS of many salad greens, or the SOUR, SOUR, SOUR of liquefied lemon. OOOOOHHHH, are those things STRONG!!! The worst? One time I threw a hot cayenne pepper into a blend that already had a garlic clove and a bit of ginger in it... enough said. Made straight wasabi/horseradish seem like baby food. NEVER AGAIN!

I think the first dozen or so veggie smoothies I made were all disasters, taste-wise, that I had to struggle to get down. They would give me chills up and down my spine, goosebumps all over, and occasionally I had to slow down for fear of not keeping them down. Sometimes they gave me profuse cold sweats, or made my face blush and my ears pop... In a way, it was enlightening (pun intended): I learned from this that REALLY STRONG STUFF is contained inside in those veggies we so innocently chomp away on! I'm sure a lot of that stuff gets released and absorbed gradually as the food passes through the intestinal tract, but some of it doesn't. When liquefied, ALL the stuff is released for quicker absorption.

On a positive note, at least the colors were pretty! I had fully BRIGHT green drinks full of oxygen-saturated cholesterol, and some of the weirdest bright --almost "neon"-- shades of pink, purple, mauve, yellow and green.

What I learned is that when you want almost impossible-to-drink but very powerfully medicinal stuff, just liquefy your regular salads or add ingredients with stronger, distinctive flavors to begin with. When you want a palatable smoothie that doesn't attack you like alien bug juice, then follow some proven recipes and common sense. While now I mostly stick to proven "safe" formulae, I still occasionally make an "explosive" smoothie and gag it down just for the effects: I do think some of these things are actually good for us, in a powerful-medicine detox sense... but not too much, not too often.

In contrast, I don't think I've ever made a bad-tasting fruit smoothie. Citrus and sweet fruits and berries all seem to go pretty well with each other, no matter how you mix them. I haven't tried putting tomatoes, olives or avocados in fruit mixes, though. They may technically be fruits, but I treat them more like vegetables. Tomatoes and avocados work well in veggie smoothies.

But those early salad smoothies with things like Garlic, Lemon, lots of beets, etc... EEEEEEEUUUUUUUWWWW!!!!

eww, why in the world eat something that your mouth is telling you is a total no go? taste is your first clue as to whether something is going to be healthy for you or not and sometimes a crazy combo Isn't healthy at all! it taxes the body trying to digest it. yuck. listen to your mouth people.

my smoothie incident this morning wasn't a disaster, it was still drinkable and tasted fine but the texture, ugh. i forgot that adding too many blueberries makes for a gelatinous mixture so we were drinking a grey pudding for breakfast. visually unappealing as well. it really did taste fine though.

my trick for a green smoothie is to use baby spinach, it has such a mild flavour that it can be disguised with any fruit. today there were the b-berries, strawbs and pineapple with a little juice. i threw in some pumpkin seed butter and a small wedge of left over avo as well for fat for the little guy. i can imagine how dreadful that would have been with the addition of mustard greens, nori or (ugh) molasses though. what a mess!

coco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> eww, why in the world eat something that your
> mouth is telling you is a total no go? taste is
> your first clue as to whether something is going
> to be healthy for you or not and sometimes a crazy
> combo Isn't healthy at all! it taxes the body
> trying to digest it. yuck. listen to your mouth
> people.
>
for me it`s the "the more nutritional stuff i throw in here the better" approach. i have a hard time, although i`m getting better, with not using the kitchen sink approach. i have to keep reminding myself that the nutritional profile is over time not at every meal. plus just the basics of how strong one particular green is. rainbow chard for instance is powerful stuff in a smoothie as is dulse o trying to mix "a bit" in is hard sometimes.
patty
patty

coco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> eww, why in the world eat something that your
> mouth is telling you is a total no go? taste is
> your first clue as to whether something is going
> to be healthy for you or not and sometimes a crazy
> combo Isn't healthy at all! it taxes the body
> trying to digest it. yuck. listen to your mouth
> people.

In general, I completely agree with you. There were several reasons, though, why I didn't always do that when I started out (and occasionally still don't)...

I started eating raw and blending things just after checking myself out of the hospital, against the protests of doctors who told me I would probably be dead within 24-48 hours. With that kind of motivation, I was far more interested in powerful healing methods, than instinct and slow, gradual cures.

I do realize that as long as you are going in the right direction (healing, improving), it doesn't matter if something takes one week, one day, or one year. If you are moving away from death, you aren't going to die before you get there! LOL However, I also knew that I needed to do things significantly differently than I had been doing, in order to "change directions" and end up still alive a month later, let alone years later.

At the time, I didn't feel I had the luxury of gradually experimenting and testing to see if I needed nutrient A or B, etc... So I took a "super-nutrition" approach, putting as many as twenty different vegetables at a time into a salad, and eating it several times a day, to "saturate" my cells and tissues with nutrients. A "shotgun approach", because I didn't know what kind of "magic bullet" might work, and perhaps it was a situation where the synergy of many things was needed. I believed --rightly so, as I was to learn-- that I had MULTIPLE nutrient deficiencies, and wanted to maximize the chances of remedying them. If I ate mono meals, it would have taken a longer time to sufficiently remedy multiple deficiencies.

Another reason is a simpler one: Sometimes, our mouths and our "gut reactions" are NOT the best indicators we have of what is good for us. Imagine if you told a child to trust his instincts in selecting food. Yum! A diet of candy bars, ice cream, and soda, here we come! As adults, we probably aren't much better... pizza and coffee, anyone? Of course, I am being facetious, but it is true that only when our systems are quite clean and well-balanced, can we truly trust our instincts. Before then, when we are out of balance, cravings occur. Addictions to things we are evolutionarily designed to crave, like fats (not necessarily the good ones) and sugar and salt, can easily occur at any time we start eating them, even when we start out well-balanced. Ditto for caffeine. So our tastes are not 100 percent reliable indicators, especially if we are not or have not been eating whole, faw foods.

Garlic is another good example of taste being at odds with what is good for us. The first day I ate it, I ran a fever and felt "garlic sickness" for eight hours after eating it, before I went to sleep, still feeling ill. BUT the next morning, I felt noticeably better than I had before eating it. So I tried it again. Again, it made me feel sick, but not as much, and for not as long, and I felt even better afterwords.

Of course, I was detoxing with the garlic; with a suffering liver, I couldn't quite keep up with the stored toxins the garlic was chelating out from my tissues, but as the toxins were dealt with, I began to feel much better. Probably the garlic was also killing off harmful/parasitic microorganisms, and I was also dealing with that, as well. For years, I had been teased about being a vampire, due to my intense aversion to garlic... but an aversion to garlic is actually the major sign that you NEED TO EAT IT!

Cayenne pepper, raw ginger, raw turmeric, and other "medicinal" foods are similar, to me: they don't taste particularly good, especially in the quantities (dosages) and forms that really make a difference, but they DO make a difference, and are worth putting up with, for that reason.

Most of the most powerful "medicinal foods" --even the ones that are not so extremely hot or bitter in their raw forms-- are not all that pleasant when liquefied, but they work and do make me feel and function better after eating/drinking them. Liquefying them just releases MORE of their nutrients, and gives one a "higher dosage" than normal eating would. I find this is often effective in bringing about noticeable, positive healing reactions and change in the body. Okay, so I may sweat a little or feel "chills" a bit...that reaction itself may be removing toxins or rebalancing things, just in a faster, more extreme way. One may get the same effect over a longer period by regularly ingesting smaller quantities, but I'm not sure this always works. I wasn't going to give myself the luxury of finding out when I was in really awful shape, although I probably could have done it that way.

For this reason, I was (and occasionally still am) happy to "choke down" some things that I did (do) not enjoy, when I know that they actually do me good. I hate the taste of cabbage, but earlier today I gagged down a glass of liquefied purple cabbage (diluted with water). I don't mind eating the exact same vegetable chopped into a mixed salad, but drunk "straight" like that, it is --to my taste-- horrible. But I LIKE what it does to my system, when I need it. It helps to heal and maintain my GI tract, and helps to reduce inflammation and stiffness in my entire body. I have learned a range of such remedies that I fall back on occasionally, after I've eaten something in a restaurant that I shouldn't have, or otherwise become "unbalanced" and want to "heal back up" a bit. So sometimes I still "choke it down". For the first five or ten minutes, I feel a little "icky", then for many hours and a few days afterwards, I feel better.

Perhaps my attitude towards food has shifted a bit, also, because I have coeliac disease (gluten intolerance). I cannot eat most foods that other people eat, anyway, and cannot eat most of the commercial sauces and flavorings (although I can always make my own gluten-free versions, if I want to bother). So I am sort of used to eating first for nutrition and health, and only secondly for taste.

That said, as most here will agree, raw foods actually taste GREAT (the BEST, IMO), once your system is clear of the old cooked/junk cravings. Still, I choose food for health and energy first, and taste a definite second. Eating the "taste first" way made me too ill for too many years, for me to go back entirely to that method of choosing foods. These days, I balance the two approaches: I often choose what I will eat by instinct, but ONLY from a range of foods that are chosen by "intellect" first. I still avoid refined and highly-processed foods, even if from time to time I might think I would like to eat some of them.

I do agree that instinct is the BEST way to choose foods most of the time, but when you are acutely ill and using food as your primary medicine, I think it is okay --and sometimes good-- to override instinct a little, at least in the short run, and to go ahead and eat some of those things that seem unpleasant, but do help heal. Also, one has to override the harmful instincts that could lead to chocolate souffles and lemon meringue pies for dinner!

Everything in moderation... including (sometimes) moderation itself.

I perfectly understand if you choose to disagree with this approach, and I can really see (and sort of agree with) both sides. I just found that the approach I took ("go ahead and choke it down because it is good for you, sometimes" worked for me, and since it did, I am still willing to use it sometimes. When I am feeling healthier and not curing anything acute, I usually trust my instincts first and foremost, too --within the framework of knowledge (that tells me to avoid highly-processed stuff and favor raw, natural foods).

Arkay thank you for the interesting post--
as for garlic--if i eat it the taste irritates my mouth all day-(so it seems strange to me that it's considered medicinal).
I believe that it is this irritating quality that is the cause of "spices" stimulating the appetite, and that this is necessary on the cooked food diet because the processing has homogenized the food into a boring undifferentiated state.

Smoothies do seem a mixed blessing.
If i eat a piece of fruit each bite may be different,
but smoothies are a form of processing and so one may end up eating slightly fermented areas...

I used to eat nori, using it to warp up lettuce and stuff to make a raw burrito. But after my last fast when i ate some plain it was disgusting. It does seem like it could ruin many a smoothie.