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Green Smoothies?! Green Smoothies!

“Tom, what should my first real blog post be about?”

“Food. Talk about food.”

Who am I to ignore such great advice from my excellent husband? Today I’m going to unveil the food item I’ve been making more than any other the past few months:

Courtesy of: Kimberly Snyder. My smoothies never look like this.

Now wait a minute—don’t just brand me as some sort of hippy and leave, never to return. Hear me out.

Green smoothies have definitely improved my quality of life. This is the first time I’ve made it through an entire school year without getting sick, despite plenty of exposure and stress. I don’t crave chocolate as much, and I have more energy. I don’t have to worry about getting enough fruits and vegetables, because I can just drink them all in one fell swoop. Also, I may or may not have lost six pounds by replacing a meal or two a week with a smoothie, making no other changes to my lifestyle.

Now if I can just get Tom to join me, we’ll be all set.

In my opinion, the internet makes the whole smoothie experience way more complicated than it needs to be. “Use only organic produce.” “Make sure it’s a 70:30 vegetable:fruit ratio.” “Don’t eat anything less than 40 minutes before or after smoothie consumption.” “Sip it slowly through a straw and swish it around your mouth before you swallow it.” Ain’t nobody got time for that. Just play around with it until you’ve got something you’d look forward to drinking. You can hardly go wrong.

To start, here’s a simple smoothie recipe I’ve been enjoying lately. Be warned: the frozen berries will turn your “green” smoothie purple. It’s still awesome.

Citrus Berry Surprise [pronounced “soo-PREEZE”] Smoothie

2 cups spinach
1 cup water
1 apple
1 orange
0.5 cup frozen berries of choice

Place ingredients in blender and blend until smooth.

Happy smoothie-ing, friends!

 

P.S. On a writing-related note, I’m working on a 35,000-word novella for Brandon Sanderson’s creative writing class. Right now I’m at 27,522 words. Good times!

 

 

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An Introduction

“If you don’t have a blog, go home and start one tonight!”—A panelist at LTUE

(Sorry, ma’am, but I waited almost exactly a month).

After all these years, it’s finally happened. I started a blog. Here it is.

As an explanation, this blog is about good times. For me, good times include (but are not limited to) family, food, chemistry, books, and writing—especially writing. And now, a bit of an introduction:

My name is Elissa Cardon Nysetvold. I was born and raised in the sweet little town of Provo, Utah. Here I met and married Tom Nysetvold, the quintessential Good Guy. Here’s a picture of us:

Awww. Cute.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I first understood the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” As a child, I thought it would be the perfect complement to a successful career as a high-power homemaker. I’ve written stories throughout my life, but for most of them, my only audience was my little sister (thanks, Rach!).

My original plan was to take a four-year break from writing to learn to be a chemist; during the first few years, I more or less abandoned any writerly aspirations. However, when Tom became aware of this, he applied the whip convinced me to “follow my dreams.”

So here I am, about to graduate from BYU and try to make that dream a reality. And because writers apparently need blogs, I’m hoping this will be a good way to con everyone I know into buying my books keep friends and family up to date on the good times to come.