Green “Julius” Smoothie — A Cold Green Thing for Waiting Days

Late July. Waiting for publisher responses. The waiting is a specific form of anxiety that sits on top of my general anxiety like a second layer of weather — the everyday clouds plus the storm front of will-they-won't-they, the specific terror of a woman who has written about her dead grandmother and sent it to strangers and is now waiting for the strangers to decide if the dead grandmother's story is worth money. The terror is absurd. The terror is real. Both things.

I made kakigori — shaved ice with homemade matcha syrup. Not Fumiko's recipe — Fumiko was suspicious of desserts that were "mostly water" — but mine, a summer indulgence that Miya and I share on the balcony while the shiso grows around us. The matcha syrup is green and bittersweet and the shaved ice is a cloud of white and the combination melts on the tongue like a cold thought dissolving. Miya eats hers too fast and gets a brain freeze and the brain freeze makes her laugh, which is the correct response to a brain freeze: not pain but comedy. Children know this instinctively. Adults forget.

I have been writing for the blog about the experience of single motherhood and cooking — not the "sad single mom eating alone" narrative that the culture provides, but the reality, which is: I cook better alone. I cook more creatively, more ambitiously, more personally. The absence of Brian freed my kitchen the way opening a window frees a room — the air circulates, the staleness clears, the cooking breathes. The blog posts about single-mom cooking are resonating. Women are writing to me. Women who are divorced, or considering divorce, or married and unhappy and cooking through it, the way I cooked through it. The cooking is the universal language. The loneliness is the universal condition. The combination of the two is what I write about, and the combination is finding its audience.

I am reading Japanese more fluently now. The three months with the tutor, plus two years of self-study, plus Fumiko's recipe cards as daily practice material, have brought me to a level where I can read the cards without Google Translate for most recipes. The kanji still defeats me sometimes — Fumiko's handwriting was beautiful and indecipherable in equal measure — but the hiragana and katakana are mine now. The reading is the bridge. The bridge spans the ocean between English and Japanese, between Portland and Sacramento, between the granddaughter and the grandmother. I am crossing it, slowly, one character at a time.

The kakigori disappears fast when Miya eats hers too quickly — brain freeze, laughter, gone — and on the days I want that same cold-green feeling without shaving ice, this smoothie is what I reach for. It’s not Fumiko’s recipe either (she would have had thoughts about drinking your vegetables), but it carries the same spirit as a bittersweet summer afternoon on the balcony: something cold, something slightly grassy and green, something that tells your nervous system the waiting is survivable. I make two glasses. Miya drinks hers in approximately forty-five seconds.

Green “Julius” Smoothie

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

• 1 cup fresh orange juice (about 2 large oranges)
• 1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt or vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk (or whole milk)
• 1 large frozen banana, broken into chunks
• 1 cup packed baby spinach
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 tsp honey, or to taste
• 1 cup ice cubes

Instructions

1. Layer the blender. Add the orange juice and almond milk to the blender first — liquid on the bottom helps the blades pull everything down evenly.
2. Add the greens. Pack the baby spinach on top of the liquid and blend on high for 20–30 seconds until fully smooth with no visible green flecks. This step first prevents bitter chunks.
3. Add remaining ingredients. Add the frozen banana chunks, yogurt, vanilla extract, and honey. Blend again on high for 30 seconds until creamy and uniform.
4. Add ice and finish. Add the ice cubes and blend 15–20 seconds more until the smoothie is thick and frosty. Taste and adjust sweetness with a little more honey if needed.
5. Serve immediately. Pour into two glasses and drink right away — this one doesn’t hold well once blended. Expect at least one person at the table to finish theirs before you’ve sat down.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 185 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 3g | Carbs: 37g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 70mg