Watermelon Mint Shake

I'm BAAACK! Fo reals! I'm back in the USofA! STATESIDE! The motherland! The mainland! Estados Unidos! LAND OF CHIPOTLE AND TRAFFIC LAWS! How many more ways can we stay USA? Way more. Don't get me started.

We got back on Sunday, after 30+ hours of surprisingly luxurious travel, and Portland greeted us with amazing weather, English-speaking hipsters, and a garden full of produce. That makes me one ridiculously happy lady! More on that produce later. How good does it feel to be HOME?! Oh so good. I could talk for days on how great it is to be in Portland, specifically, but I'll spare you those thoughts for another day.

After avoiding jetlag in Vietnam, we thought we might be able to do the same thing upon arriving home. Not so much luck, at least for me. We're still doing our sunrise runs to re-set the internal clock, and today felt absolutely normal, but yesterday was a doozy! Is it common to have it be harder going one way than the other? I have no clue, but am glad to feel back to normal now — just in time to jet off to THREE WEDDINGS IN EIGHT DAYS. Normally, that wouldn't be super hard. This time, though, we have Friday night on the West coast, and then Saturday afternoon on the East coast. Red-eye, here we come! Then we have a week of downtime in the East before the final West coast wedding the next weekend. Get ready for some more travel instagrams! Except this time I'll probably be wearing real clothes and maybe {gasp!} makeup and not sweating to death. Hopefully. It is still summer, technically, so don't hold me accountable on that sweating thing.

Instagram sidenote: I haven't had a phone for a month, so I've been improvising with Derek's iPad... but I'm over it. So I've been radio silent for a few days. I'm alive! I promise my lunches look awesome! And my coffee! Hopefully the new phone situation will be resolved tonight, so you can expect to find me harassing you visually ASAP. I KNOW YOU'RE EXCITED!

I've been excited about COOKING NEW THINGS! I've spent the last four months fantasizing about cooking delicious foods and taking their pictures and giving you guys some FRESH RECIPES! I spent so much time thinking about this blog, and it's direction, while we were traveling... but didn't feel I could really put it all into practice while we were gone. Now that we're home for a bit {the next 2 weeks excluded}, I CAN! I'm really looking forward to it, and hope you guys see some changes {for the better}, too!

Watermelon Mint Shake. You probably want to know what the heck that's all about, right? Right. Well, in Laos our friend Charissa turned us onto lemon mint shakes — as far as I could tell they were just ice, lemon, mint, and sugar. And really freaking delicious. Beyond delicious, and FRESH. It was like brushing your teeth without the bristles and the sore biceps. {Um, I joke. More like sore triceps!} Not that I endorse this as a plausible dental hygiene routine, but... how else do you get such a minty mouth!? Incredible. (Once again I joke, if you rarely have a minty and fresh mouth, and this is your first source of said mintiness, you may want to look into dentistry practices such as Dentist Seattle or others, to go for a check-up and ensure your oral hygiene is at it should be.

These shakes got me thinking, as I arrived home to a fridge full of perfectly cubed watermelon and a garden with mint in abundance: wouldn't mint and watermelon go together? YOU BET YOUR SORE TRICEPS THEY DO! I stuck a bowl of the watermelon cubes in the freezer overnight, picked a ton of mint, and gave the blender a little workout. Now, I don't EVER endorse putting ice in a smoothie. Like, water ice. Ice made of water. Just water. NORMAL ice. It's absolutely the best way to ruin a perfectly good smoothie. Just freeze your ingredients, duh! DON'T MAKE ME CHECK YOUR SMOOTHIE CONTENTS, PEOPLE! I will crack down on any ice-cubers out there! Freeze yo' melons!

I've done all the legwork for you guys here: don't use 100% frozen watermelon cubes. Then you just have a bunch of ice and it's super hard to get the whole mixture to blend. Use ⅓ to ½ FRESH {read: unfrozen} watermelon cubes to get things moving. I added a little bit of salt, because that's how I roll {AND IT'S AMAZING SO YOU HAVE TO DO IT!}, and no sugar. I think watermelon is plenty sweet, but I know some of you are signed up for a Karo IV as soon as that's a thing, so if you need sugar: add it. And then maybe go on a raw vegetable cleanse? Seriously, that's a SWEET drink!

Go whip this up while summer is still summer and it's still hot hot hot outside! It's been warm and lovely here in Portland, but I can feel that fall crisp at 6:30 in the morning, and it's not going away! Go mow your lawn, work up a sweat, and then make this and feel like you never need to brush your teeth again. {Ew. I'm stopping. Don't follow my advice}.

Watermelon Mint Shake

• Author: by Mary
• Prep Time: 2 mins
• Cook Time: 2 mins
• Total Time: 4 minutes
• Yield: 2 1x

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Ingredients

Units USM Scale 1x2x3x

• 3 cups cubed watermelon, frozen
• 2 cups cubed watermelon, fresh
• ½ cup lightly packed fresh mint leaves
• ¼ tsp salt

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Instructions

1. Combine all ingredients in the blender.
2. Blend until smooth.
3. Add more salt if needed.
4. Serve immediately.

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