onfocus

I have a smoothie for breakfast every morning. I've been making them for years, and I've had a chance to hone the recipe to perfection over that time. I don't measure anything anymore, I just dump stuff into the blender. But I thought I should share my recipe titled My Smoothie Technique is Unstoppable. Here are the basics with approximate measurements:

• 1 cup frozen strawberries
• 3/4 cup orange juice
• 1 6 oz. vanilla yogurt
• 1 banana

Throw into a blender and blend. Of course the quality of the smoothie is completely dependent on the quality of the ingredients. Here are my choices for ingredients:

Stahlbush Island Farms Frozen Strawberries, a local Corvallis company, great strawberries. They're not certified organic, but they have a lot of text on the package about no pesticide residue. Frozen strawberries are expensive—especially in the winter—but you can't skimp on these if you want your smoothie to be unstoppable. If I'm having a strawberry emergency and I can't get to the Corvallis Co-op, I'll pick up Safeway Organics strawberries. (But I don't feel as good about it.)

Columbia Gorge Orange Juice, from another local company (Hood River, OR). I used Odwalla Orange Juice for several years until I tried this brighter, happier orange juice. Like Odwalla, this isn't cheap OJ. I buy the 1/2 gallon size at the co-op and it's even a bit more expensive than Odwalla. But remember the goal: unstoppable.

Tillamook Vanilla Bean Yogurt from Tillamook, OR. Yogurt is the real x-factor in this smoothie, and I've tried a bunch. This yogurt has sugar and corn syrup, so it's definitely not "pure" in the healthy, unrefined sugar sense. But it does have live cultures, so I get the beneficial bacteria. This isn't a creamy, European style yogurt—it has some heft to it. So if you don't have Tillamook where you are, you might look for a heftier yogurt to bulk things up. This yogurt also makes the smoothie insanely sweet, and I'm all for that.

Finally, organic bananas. I don't sweat the brand too much, I just pick up what I can find.

My blending technique is probably stoppable, but there is a knack to it. I have a Braun blender, I dump in everything in the order I've listed, and I start at 1. Once the strawberries are chopped up I crank up the speed. It's key that you don't stop the blending process until you're at the consistency you want. Stopping and starting will throw smoothie all over the sides of the blender, wasting precious expensive ingredients.

The quantities I've mentioned here fill up one of my glasses perfectly, sometimes with a little extra. But no bit of smoothie is wasted in my house. I stopped drinking all caffeinated beverages last February, and I find if I don't have this sugar jolt every morning I'll be dragging by ten o'clock, barely able to function. I also try to eat a piece of toast with peanut butter with my smoothie—the protein helps slow the absorption of this massive sugar hit into my blood. Anyway, this smoothie gives me pretty sustained energy in the morning.

In the end I get a smoothie that is the sum of its parts, no one ingredient overpowering the others. Probably more than you wanted to know about my breakfast habits, but I take my smoothies very seriously.

For those of you who might not know, Metafilter is a community weblog where members discuss stuff they've found online. Matt started the site in 1999, and I signed up as a member at some point in the early days. (I'm user 191.) I only participated a little at the site during the first couple of years.

Matt and I worked together at Pyra (makers of Blogger), and during that time Metafilter lived on a single desktop tower under Matt's desk. A lot of the early members of Metafilter were also early bloggers, and it became sort of a central "hang out" for people interested in weblogs. Often it was one of the only sources covering and discussing what was happening with blog-related topics. At Pyra, we often asked ourselves, how will Metafilter react? when contemplating changes—because we knew any announcement would show up on the site.

Matt's been running and growing Metafilter ever since, with the addition of several Metafilter sites including the insanely useful and popular Ask Metafilter. I've been a regular reader and fan of the site despite my lack of conversing there, and I've gotten to know various MeFites, both through the site and through conversations with Matt. The community there is definitely unique (in a good way), and I'm constantly surprised at the depth of knowledge members have on any given topic. Though every site has its share of arguments and name-calling, I'm also continually surprised by the level of civility for such an open community. (Which I think is a reflection of the crack MeFi moderation squad, and the community norms that have been established.)

For the past year I've been working with Matt on Metafilter behind the scenes one day/week. I helped Matt launch MeFi Music, Metafilter Jobs, and some new features across the site. It's been great working with Matt regularly, and having instant, massive feedback to changes from lots of, erm, passionate users was a good change of pace from writing books.

In about a week, I'm going to be spending most of my time on Metafilter. I'm excited about this change, and I'm looking forward to helping Metafilter grow with a more sustained effort. Matt has some cool stuff coming up for the site, and it's going to be great to help him build it. The only remaining question for me is, how will Metafilter react?