Green Smoothy Glitch of the Day

This morning's report is that I woke up with a very unpleasant bitter taste in my mouth. At first I thought it was the smoothy that did it, but I went and made (instant) coffee and the bitter taste of the coffee made it clear THAT was the source of it. Apparently the smoothy and the coffee are at war with each other and I'm going to have to make a choice.

This morning I went ahead and had the coffee anyway, from habit. Added a little extra sweetener. I want to do this Green Smoothy regime but I also don't want to force habit changes on myself because they'll just make me irritable and more likely not to stick it out. I'm really hoping that as I go any changes I really need to make will just sort of spontaneously begin to move into my life, organically as it were, changing my subjective experience in favor of them.

Then S emailed me about a spice tea that she likes as a substitute for coffee, and I have to suppose it would probably go better with the smoothy than the coffee does so I'm going to keep it in mind as a reasonable substitute.

She had tried to post this as a comment on my last smoothy blog post but was unable to figure out how to do it, so I'll copy her comment here.

I don't know why but the different templates for Blogspot blogs also have different formats for posting comments. This particular design apparently doesn't allow Anonymous postings -- you have to have a "profile" or one of various accounts in order to post, unless I'm not understanding completely how it works.

Anyway, here's what she wrote:

Good for you! If you want a delicious, stimulating, warming, healthy substitute for coffee, try YOGI TEA. I've been drinking it with a sprinkle of stevia and a drop of soy cream, for 20 years.

If you can go to an Asian food store you can get ingredients cheaply.

YOGI TEA
4 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
5 cloves
Large knob of sliced fresh ginger
sprinkling of cardamon seeds
sprinkling of anise seeds
sprinkling of fennel seeds
black pepper corns (optional)
simmer from 15-25 minutes
(the longer you simmer the stronger it gets.)
You can add water and reheat several times.

This is probably very good advice and I'm going to keep it in mind although right now I don't happen to have any of the spices on hand. Since spices are very expensive I've had to forgo many of my favorites for a long time as it is (and the nearest Asian store isn't close), but if this diet change goes through for me I do expect to be gradually changing many things, it's just going to have to be slow.

(Her mention of the sweetener stevia reminds me that this too is a change I expect to be making, but as with so much in the alternative health lifestyle it is controversial and I'll probably do a post on it eventually. Also on soy products -- hint: they make me sick, the very thought of soy protein turns my stomach because of a particular experience I definitely should write about).

I'd also like to rename the tea of course as I'm not into Yogis. Maybe I'll use just a few of the spices and call it Apostle Tea or Pilgrim Tea or something like that for starters.