Pat and I enjoy all treats. While we regularly ooh and ahhh about our ooey gooey sweet, salty, and fatty treats, we also have a deep affinity for our earthy green delights.

Meet our typical smoothie.

We use our mighty Ninja to blend many fruit and vegetable juices. This particular number is a mixture of coconut water, kale, carrots, mango, and flaxseed. We drink smoothies like this every couple days or so, and we generally eat well balanced meals at home. Believe it or not, the carrots are very sweet and the kale just blends right in. I personally do not like the taste of the Naked Green Machine and other fruity drinks anymore. I can’t stand Jamba Juice anymore after being an addict all of 2004! They are all too sweet and go too far to mask the taste of the vegetables. The unfortunate point is that people think they’re “going healthy” drinking those behemoth fruit and additive blends, but they’re not. It would be better if we all just admit we’re having a sugar treat – nothing wrong with that!

Over the years, Pat and I look for the fresh juice bars whenever we travel. We know that we’re less likely to eat fresh fruit and vegetables on the road. We hardly find a fruit and veggie treat that everyone is raving about, let’s be real. Sad but true. Life on the road can be high gluten, high everything less nutritious. We’re also unlikely to exercise.

My personal role is to ensure that we’re consuming foods high in nutritional value to meet our basic needs. Very important. In addition to the local mom and pop juicing bars – largely run by Asians who also sell fresh produce – we also fall back on Whole Foods. Some of them will make you a smoothie, while other locations will juice for you. Beggars can’t be choosy so we will drink either.

Our other travel saving grace is water. Pat started us on that. I remember him buying gallons of water (and drinking right out of the gallon) on long road trips. As someone who didn’t want to have to use the facilities constantly I would not drink much. I learned the hard way that Pat was right. Constant hydration was necessary. So between water, juices, an apple/orange, and plain yoghurt, we generally have a little snack pack so we can spend the rest of our calories on the ooey gooey. Yum!