Valentine’s Day has always seemed to me to be a day to celebrate our romantic delusion: all we need to do is find ‘the one,’ and our lives will be perfect; we can finally be happy, whole and complete!
Our family’s Valentine’s Day this year started with an early wake up from our still sick 10-month-old
– definitely not a luxurious start to the day. So we decided to both get up and make a decadent breakfast. A celebration! Of what, we weren’t yet sure. We were still too foggy-brained.
As we nibbled on our syrup-soaked pancakes, sipped our tea and watched the rain come steadily down outside, while simultaneously trying to redirect the now-happy little one from her well-traveled trajectory towards my computer cord, I had a moment of being simply happy – happy at how everything was, just as it was. None of us were completely healthy or sleeping well, but here we were, having breakfast in our pyjamas, and really – what more could we want? I realized that this was our Valentine’s Day celebration: not cinnamon hearts or dinner out, but a celebration of the beauty and joy of life, even through tired eyes and the awareness of imperfection.
This week’s smoothie is just that: fruity and sweet, earthy and wholesome, slightly astringent. Not trying to be perfect at all, but very much perfectly whole and complete, if you just let it be so.
Blueberry Black Tea Smoothie
Adapted, based on our fridge’s contents, from Naturally Ella
Serves: 2 smoothies
- 1 cup brewed and cooled English breakfast tea (we used Murchie’s 1894 Select Orange Pekoe)
- 1 ½ cups frozen blueberries
- ½ cup peeled, cooked, and chopped red beets
- ½ frozen mango
- ¼ cup apple juice
- Combine
ingredients in a blender in the order listed. Blend until smooth and
add water or ice if desired. Play around with the ingredients and feel free to swap out the mango for banana, or the apple juice for any other juice, depending on what’s in your fridge!