Green Slime(r)!!!

You KNOW you remember this guy! I’m going to give you a recipe today that inspired me to revisit Ghostbusters via Google. But what I’m giving you is a lot healthier than whatever he’s eating here! And far less scary!

A couple weeks ago, one of our favorite Los Angeles transplants returned permanently to California. This was definitely a very sad loss, but being involved in a program where people come to work from all over the country, one must expect to lose friends to geography once they enter the world of normally paid medicine! Despite my wish to just stomp around and pout, I decided to host a dinner for her and invited our other favorite Los Angeles transplant. However, I am still working on said transplant to come back after his 8 months served in California. Sound like prison? Good! Ray, I hope you’re reading!

With all of this useless information I’ve given you, one piece of useful information is that my dear friend Sarah is a vegetarian. A no fish vegetarian. Since I’ve recently amped up my protein intake in the form of lean meats, it took some real thinking on what to serve for dinner. But alas, I had a great idea for green gazpacho and it turned out absolutely beautiful. Gazpacho is a cold tomato based soup. However, I decided I was nixing the tomatoes and this is what I came up with.

Here’s the breakdown for 4 servings:

2 cucumbers, peeled

1 yellow bell pepper

2 cloves garlic

2 scallions

½ Serrano pepper

1 Tbsp white wine vinegar

*I did not measure this, you shouldn’t either

olive oil

s&p

fresh basil leaves, torn

Put everything except for the olive oil and basil in a blender. Ray brought the Vitamix since I blew out my blender on my cleanse! And hello Vitamix! You could blend up bodies in that thing! Ok Ok back to instructions.

Start blending and add olive oil slowly until the texture of the mix is smooth and soupy. You may have to do half the veg and add the other half once it's smooth. This will then need to be chilled for an hour or so. I didn’t have that much time, so I then blended a handful of ice into it. Either way is fine. Then pour into small cups. Pour a leeeeetle bit of olive oil on top and sprinkle with some torn basil.

This was an incredibly refreshing version of traditional gazpacho with a bit of a kick! My little vegetarian friend loved it and so did us meat eaters! Presentation on this was super impressive, so I highly encourage you to serve it for a dinner party.

Told you it was beautiful!!

Salud!