vegan coffee smoothie to the rescue!

Ever have a Friday totally betray you and start acting like a Monday? What gives, Friday? How did I wrong you?

In the middle of the day, after a totally productive morning, I finally gave myself a break to go get my caffeine fix before a headache set in (yeah, I'm addicted). First, the coffee grinder was making a weird sound as I ground the beans. I opened it up to find that some of the parts had broken off and so *shrug* oh well, this espresso was brewed with coffee beans my sister-in-law brought back from Indonesia and bits of plastic from the coffee grinder. I really don't have another choice; there is literally no coffee walking distance from my house, and I don't have a car and I was working from home today. As my hubs pointed out: boiling water isn't going to melt plastic; it's fine.

Then I opened the fridge to find milk since I'll get the shakes if I take my coffee straight - no dice. Dang! I checked the cupboards, hoping we might still have a box of nondairy milk in there somewhere: nope. Okay, then - I had a bowl of almonds soaking in the fridge; I'd just make almond milk and then proceed with coffee! Only the almonds had been soaking too long and I found a little green spot of mold floating on the water. Double dang! I composted the moldy almonds (argh, what a waste! And no more in the cupboard to use!), washed the bowl, and stopped for a second to think.

That's when the coffee smoothie was born. I had left over almond grounds (from other batches of homemade almond milk) in a bowl in the freezer. I threw a few handfuls in the blender. Added an overripe banana from the kitchen table (it's the end of the week and we've eaten all our groceries, can you tell?). Realizing I could also clear out some real estate in the fridge, I added the last 6 or 8 dates from an ancient package, and recycled the plastic tub. Then I added nearly 2 cups of cold water and blended until it looked creamy and smooth. Then I poured in the coffee, blended some more, and voila! A coffee smoothie.

It was a little too sweet, with those dates AND the banana. But who cares? It was coffee! And as an unanticipated bonus: this bad boy (plus two full refills - I made a LOT of coffee smoothie) filled me up for another three hours of work and even some yard work - not bad for my only meal today!