so, i've had some trouble finding two staples in my diet recently - fresh strawberries for my daily smoothies and orange juice, which i drink one tall glass of on most days - and it's led me to a little bit of tweaking.

there are several videos on my diet at my vlog site, which i suppose are now mostly here, too. and, i'll remind you that i look half of my age and have dangerously low cholesterol; i'm doing something right.

with the orange juice, it's actually a packaging thing. i'm used to buying tetrapacks, which are easy to transport in a school bag and fit compactly inside of a smallish fridge (and my fridges have been getting smaller since i moved from the first basement). there's been some kind of mass decision to switch to these awkward plastic bottles that don't stack well in a bag and don't fit well in a fridge. my initial workaround was to switch to apple juice, and if the intent of the oj is mostly to get a ton of C (and, i'm not anti-sugar. sugar is good for you.) it's not awful, but i was missing out on some fortified vitamins. as it happened to be, i couldn't find any apple juice, either, so i had to shop around, and ended up overpaying for some tropicana tetrapacks on sale. in the long run, i'm not going to be interested in paying for expensive tropicana orange juice, so i'm kind of in need of a shift if the manufacturers hold steady on their shift to these awkward containers. i don't know what they're thinking.

with the berries, they're just out of season, so i ended up getting some frozen strawberries instead, but i supplemented with some fresh blueberries, just because i wanted something fresh. so, my smoothies this month are going to be made of fresh bananas, fresh kiwis, frozen strawberries, fresh blueberries, cherry ice cream and vanilla soy. it was kind of a snap decision, based on some uneasiness around the frozen strawberries. my thinking was that the frozen strawberries are probably only half as good as the fresh ones, so i should get some fresh blueberries to compensate. was that clear thinking?

it seems to depend, and, in my case, probably not. my instincts were correct - fresh fruit is always preferable. but, given that i live in canada, and so much of the fruit gets shipped in from mexico or california, i'm not actually buying fresh fruit. the ideal would be to buy fruit made in local greenhouses, which is already rare, and i'm going to guess that the few greenhouses that do exist around here are mostly going to end up wasted on marijuana :(. you'd have to test to find out, but because i'm dealing with so much travel, there's some chance that the frozen fruit may actually be less bad.

that's less of a praise for frozen fruit and more of an indictment of our economy. what i'm actually thinking is that i'd rather move to a warmer climate in order to get fresher fruit.

but, i ended up doing some cursory research on blueberries and decided i should really make a place for them. it's not like i didn't know about blueberries - i knew. trust me; i knew. it's just that they're not the easiest thing to work in to a diet. i've avoided both blueberries and raspberries in smoothies because they kind of don't blend well - the blueberries are too fibrous, and the raspberries get those little seeds stuck in the blend. i decided some time ago that sticking with strawberries (and tomatoes. i eat a lot of tomatoes.) was good enough, and i think the results speak for themselves. but, i'm revisiting that - i want a place for the blueberry in my life. i want daily intake.

what i'm thinking is that i might want to look at some blueberry juice as a replacement for some orange juice, if i can find it in a pure blend - not concentrate, not flavoured, but 100% actual juice. that could be the way around the packaging problem.

as mentioned, i'm not anti-sugar, but i do kind of wish that orange juice was more than just C, too. so, this kind of solves two problems.

and, will there still be a place for orange juice? oj is something i've been keen on since i was a kid. but, i dunno. if blueberry juice is superior - and it is - why would i stick with the inferior choice? shouldn't i always choose blueberry over orange?

i don't know if this is available or economical, but i'm going to look.

for now, the blueberries are just adding a little tart to the smoothie. i wouldn't say it's enough of a taste difference to make a decision around, although it's hard to downplay the health benefits.