Main focus: Vegetables and Travel

I do apologize for not posting much lately, and a warning, it probably won't get better for a bit.  I'm traveling quite a bit, and when not traveling, I've really been cutting down on large meals and cooking.  I've been focusing on raw vegetables for at least two meals of the day.  This has really been giving me a lot of energy, but it's not so fun to blog about.  So just to explain why I've been absent, I wanted to post.

Here are some examples of my meals lately.  These were my two meals today.

First, I have been giving the blender a workout, with what I call Green Smoothies.  The smoothie base is a half blender full of spinach, beet leaves, swiss chard, or kale - often a mixture.  Then I usually add celery and sometimes parsley.  Then I add some chopped up veggies, either carrots or beets and a piece of fruit, either an apple, banana, or frozen organic mango.  But as you can see by the picture below I'm trying to add more local, seasonal fruit.  In this one I put a plum.  A little fruit adds just the right amount of sweetness for the greens.  Sometimes I also add some lemon juice or ginger.  I put in unsweetened soy milk, which seems to be adding a good amount of protein.

Now granted the color is always interesting and not always pretty.  If I put beets in they tend to be a fun bright red.  Either way, Joe just gives me the "That looks disgusting" look.  But, I enjoy the fresh vegetable flavor and the boost of energy I've gained.

 Joe's not around today, so for my second meal, I just sauteed up some beet greens and swiss chard in some olive oil and garlic and added some quinoa I had cooked up in the fridge.

Just an end note, most of my travel is work related, but we spent a week working in Missoula last week, just because we've been wanting to visit Missoula.  It was a wonderful week.  We had a small condo on the 8th and top floor of the historic Wilma in Downtown Missoula. 

Below you can see the view of the river from our condo.

Below is the view of Wednesday's "out to lunch" event from our condo.  We got something to eat there and brought it up to the condo where we worked and listened to the band play.

Below is a view of the Wilma with Thursday nights band playing in front of it.

I adored Missoula.  The university was beautiful, the people were friendly, and there was always some event going on with live music.  In addition, they have a store called "The Good Food Store" that I was sad to leave.  It's like a Whole Foods, but better!