We all have our guilty reading pleasures, and People Magazine has been mine ever since I did a “test” subscription on my son’s new iPad two or three years ago. I can’t say I’ve been excited by too many of the recipes over this time period, but the April 13, 2015 (Avril Lavigne cover) issue may just have changed my life.

In it, there is an article about Marco Canora with three of his smoothie recipes. He’s shilling a new cookbook (which I just got around to buying today) and I’m not sure how important smoothies are to his overall food world, but for some reason, the concept struck me. I’ve made all three of his recipes with variations multiple times in the past 2 1/2 weeks. I’ve dug out a couple of other cookbooks we purchased for my mother-in-law when she was fighting cancer – the Crazy Sexy books, raw food books, smoothie specific cookbooks. My mother caught the bug and bought us the Linda Westwood book Slimming Smoothies. I’m smoothie-ing every day now and just ordered a new Nutri Ninja blender that I hope can manage ice and chia seeds a bit better!

Why am I doing this? My young son and I have traded off seven colds and 1 bout of flu since October. It’s been miserable around here. My husband has only caught a couple of them, but he doesn’t need to be this drained with his very physical job. A few days after I started smoothie-ing, my son brought home the stomach crud. I didn’t catch it! Was it the smoothies? I don’t know, but adding at least another daily serving of veg and two of fruit, as the smoothies tend to have, must be doing something good for my body. Not to mention the added liquid, which I certainly need. I’m trying to replace dinner daily with my smoothie. Will I lose weight too? I need to get on the scale and start tracking.

Anyone interested in joining me on this diet exploration? I’d love to discuss recipes and cookbooks with fellow smoothie-ers!