For those of you who've followed my little Milk Calendar experiment, you know that I don't think very highly of many of the recipes I've tried thus far. What started off as a bit of curiosity, a bit of fun and a bit of a yen for easy and tasty recipes more often than not ends up a bit of disappointment, a bit of frustration and a yen for the fast food mall up the street.Last month's recipe was bad..badbadbadbadbad. The one before set off my snark-o-meter. The one before that was good-okay. To save pixel space, let's just agree to say that that's a good summation of all the recipes thus far.
So I hope you understand when I admit to being a bit...ummm...trepidacious when I try the next calendar recipe. And you won't be overly surprised when that trepidation turns to paranoia when the recipe works, is somewhat tasty and makes me almost happy that I tried it.
July's sensational smoothies were already in my bad books for using "sensational" in the title. Basically, I thought the milk people were trying too hard to sell me on the concept--shades of the travesty that was "Faster-than-take-out chicken and veggie chow mein." Maybe it was a self-preservation thing, but I decided to try two of the three offered recipes--blueberry-banana-orange and pomegranate sunrise I opted out of the raspberry lemon. But allow me to put on record here that I think "pomegranate sunrise" is a nauseating title, reminiscent of some 1970s disco-crazed lippy colour. Okay...they weren't "sensational" by my rather middling standards, but they were sensational by the calendar's.
The blueberry smoothie was quite pretty with its bubbly mauve top, and while the pomegranate one was not as pristinely delineated as in the calendar's picture, was still quite attractive.
Both smoothies were very quick, tasty and surprisingly hunger-ending. Who'd have thunk recipes when in their original and untampered states would hold their own? So here's where my innate paraonoia kicks in...
Is this the token "hey, it works and I might want to have it again" recipe? Or is this just the beginning of a better half of the calendar to lull you into looking forward to the next calendar? You know...enough good recipes at the end to make you forget about the bad stuff that happened in the first half, so by the time the next calendar comes tucked between sales flyers for all those things the shops over-ordered and are trying to convince you that your Great Auntie Ermintrude would love for Christmas, forget how...unappetising the recipes were in the first half of the year.
I don't know but we've got the balance of 2008 to find out.
cheers!
jasmine
I hate to be a skeptic, but really, how badly can you mess up a smoothie? You throw some fruit, ice, bit of sugar, and milk/yogurt into a blender and have at. I think it would be hard even for the milk calendar people to mess that one up!
ReplyDeleteI look forward to seeing what next month brings. Hopefully not more bad curries!
love the color of the blueberry one!
ReplyDeleteYes, what the top two comments said - I'd like to think that the milk calendar couldn't screw up a smoothie, but I guess it is possible.
ReplyDeleteNice that you finally had a decent result though.
And for a joke - I've just noticed that almost all of my word verification words here start with an A! How is that for special? :-)
Of course it worked. Milk, fruit to make smoothies cant be messed up to much. But I sense you could have them even better if left to your own creative mind. I think they shpuld hire you test before releasing next years.
ReplyDeleteHa, doesn't pomegranite sunrise sound like the name of an Avon lipstick (remember those little sample tubes?). Too funny!
ReplyDeleteI think you should put your head to making up an equally terrible title for your own smoothie and try to pass it off as normal. Mango Motion? Guava Greatness? I know there are so many potential gems out there you can channel...
ReplyDeleteI'm glad there was finally a good one! Hopefully the rest will be good as well!
ReplyDeleteAh, smoothies -- how bad can they be? My favorite summer smoothie is terribly indulgent, but uses vanilla frozen yogurt instead of plain yogurt, so it's more of an ice cream smoothie! Frozen yogurt, banana, strawberry, lemon.
ReplyDeleteI rarely, (if ever) cook from the milk calendar, but it's just such a staple in my house, I couldn't imagine it not being around!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the words of warning re the milk calendar. I have it on the fridge, write on it often, but have never been tempted to cook from it.
ReplyDeleteI agree that is is pretty tough to mess up a smoothie though,
Cheers!
Oh god... I'm so out of the loop. I don't even know what Milk Calendar is! I'll have to research. I'm with those people that it's hard to screw up a smoothie but it happened to me once. I've even blocked out what the fruit it was that bad but I do know that it was HORRID! Thankfully I've had enough good smoothies to negate the bad reaction.
ReplyDeleteDo hope you don't mind that I've tagged you for a meme. Join in if you like. Drop by my place and see what it's about. :)
I suspected that the smoothies would be okay. But I'm not ready to let the Milk Board off the hook on this recipe either. (I'm mean that way... but you probably knew that.)
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth are they suggesting to use FROZEN fruit? In July? When there's tons of fresh fruit available?
We recently got some fantastic Ontario peaches (the kind that are impossible to eat whole without having peach juice running down one's chin) And we indulged ourselves in peach lassis - no, not using the milk calendar recipe... I don' need no stinkin' recipe to make a lassi.... ;-)
Anyway, why not suggest fresh fruit and then in the suggestions below, they could mention that when fresh fruit isn't available, frozen works too.
-Elizabeth