Raw Green Smoothies

Apricot Banana Smoothie with Spinach

Don’t let anyone tell you that all smoothies are created equal. It’s just not true. Some are really bad!

In my opinion, this one falters from the use of sub-prime apricots. Using ripe fruit is really important and, well, this time I guess I didn’t pick up ripe apricots. And I didn’t pick just a few, I picked nearly 40 lbs! I bought them over the phone for 25 bucks and, as it turns out, you get what you pay for.

In an effort to try to make them worthy for consumption, I let them age a little while. You know, how you might let a pineapple age or a banana age. Sometimes it works, other times the fruit is just too green and it doesn’t ripen much at all.

Armed with pounds of apricots, I went searching on the web to see if I could find the best apricot smoothie recipe around. I poked around a little and came across the Incredible Smoothies website. Looking a little deeper, I found a page that outlined their apricot smoothies. I thought to myself – ok, this looks as good as anything I’ve found, I’ll give it a go.

Aiming to make the Apricot-Banana smoothie this is what I mixed together:

Apricots, Spinach, Banana, Dates and water

I’ve got to say it all looks good.

  • 1 cup water
  • 8 little Aricots
  • 2 Bananas
  • 7-8 Deglet Noor Dates
  • A bunch of fresh garden Spinach
  • And a probiotic for good measure (optional)

After slicing the apricots in half and tearing out the seeds (wasn’t easy for the fruit was still pretty green), I stacked it all up on the blender and gave it a spin for 60-70 seconds and ended up with this.

Green - as in green apple tart!

Have to tell you it looks great!  Smooth and creamy, light and fragrant – but tart as H….eck. Dang, don’t like to swear much, but this one made me pucker up.

I think I’ve found a new fruit to avoid. I absolutely love raw peaches, but I have a hard time finding plums and apricots that have been picked anywhere near ripe. In a way, I wish I had a couple trees growing out back so I could pick my own 20 lbs – when they turned sweet and juicy.  I guess I’ll just have to wait until we’re clearly into peach season or for when the pears come around.

But for now, avoid green apricots at any cost. Save your money for something a little sweeter!

Mint-Chocolate Smoothie

If fresh fruit and greens it not your thing, mint-chocolate might be what the doctor’s calling for! I’m thankful to have a couple different types of mint growing in the garden, and as it turns out, this variety of spearmint is coming on strong right now. It’s amazingly refreshing when added to a smoothie and, as luck would have it, it doesn’t take much.

What I absolutely love about this smoothie is the fresh garden lettuce! Yes. It’s been a cold wet spring that there was absolutely no sunlight for growing – just enough to survive. The zucchini plants that I put in in may just sat there for more than a month. It wasn’t until the clouds parted that the plants actually started to grow. And, now that the sun has arrived, I’ve got a bounty of lettuce. These leaves are delicately succulent with no bitters. They’re so good, you could just graze your want through the garden – which is what I did today for lunch.

In any case, I had company over this morning and offered them a green smoothie. Being grateful guests, they willingly agreed to whatever I wanted to make. Knowing that one of my guests has a love affair with chocolate, I decided to sneak in just a little:

Little cacao goes a long way

And as you can see, it really wasn’t much. But the combination of flavors all mixed together to make for a mouth watering delight.

Mint-Chocolate Lettuce Smoothie

Love that garden lettuce

Clockwise from left (sort of):

Add milk, probiotic, dates to blender. Peal leaves off mint stocks and use only the leaves. Peal oranges and make sure no seeds make it into the blender. Add bananas and then stuff in the lettuce.

It all fit!

It’s hard to imagine that that entire bowl of lettuce fit into the blender at one time. It took a little packing, but it wasn’t too bad.

Blend for about 60 seconds. You’ll want to start out slow  and get the greens turning before you whip it up to high for the 60 seconds.

When good and smooth, add the little spoonful of cacao and about ¼ teaspoon vanilla. It really doesn’t take much vanilla at all. Blend for a couple seconds so the powders mix in.

Serve.

Just part of the results

With the volume from the oranges, bananas and coconut milk, the end result was nearly 8 cups. After using the nice glasses for the guests, I ended up with what was left over. It was probably 2 cups that tasted great and went down smooth.

I’m going to have to get me some descent party glasses that I can use for breakfast on the weekends. As much as I love me quart size jar (with lid), I don’t really need it around the house on a lazy Sunday morning.

If you love mint and chocolate, you’ll probably love this one. Life’s too short to not give it a try!

Enjoy.

Beet Melody – the early summer smoothie

Baby beets are finally in season again and the Saturday market always has the best selection. One of my favorite vendors there is Full Circle Farm.

Don't panic - It's organic!

I’ve thought about signing up for their fresh produce delivery program, but it seems that I’m always in town on Saturday morning, so I just take 15 minutes and stop in. And this time, as it turns out, they had four different types of beets in their selection. I grabbed two bunches with the heaviest collection of greens with the idea that the first most valuable part would be my blended breakfast.

Thus, the Beet Melody Smoothie!

Here’s what I started with:

Beautiful beet tops

As you can see, this smoothie is a bit on the tropical side, for the fruit in abundance in this house happens to be oranges and pineapple. Which, I have no problem with.

If you want to reproduce this, you’ll need:

  • A few seedless oranges (I used three)
  • About an inch of pineapple
  • One banana
  • Seven or Eight little Deglet Noor dates
  • And, of course, beet tops.
  • (optional spoonful ORMUS Supergreens, Reliv Classic and Probiotic)

As you can see in the picture, I’ve already trimmed the beets. Turned out they made a beet-carrot salad last night. The beets were red on the outside and white on the inside. By sight, you’d probably mistaken them as radishes.

In any case, wash these greens! Anything that sits next to the ground is bound to have a little extra dirt in it. I use a water bath to really get it out.

Easy rinsing process

After shaking the greens in the water and carefully rinsing them off, they stack up in the strainer on the right. Afterwards, this is what you’re left with:

Leave the dirt behind!

No worries. We all process a lot of dirt in our lifetimes, a little more shouldn’t hurt. But I really like my minerals in the more bio available form – plant form.

After trimming the outer part of the pineapple, pealing the oranges (and picking out the seeds) and pealing the banana, everything stacks up like this:

This is what you'd normally have to chew up!

When I start blending something this full, I always start out slowly. I use the tamper to move the larger pieces down and get the mixture to start moving. As soon as it does, I remove the tamper, place the clear cap on top of the vita-mix and work it up to full on.

As with most smoothies, I start counting and cleaning. After about 60 seconds most the mess is cleaned up and the smoothie is ready to pure. These are always so easy!

And the results

Remember that the Queen of green smoothies says that to really change your life you’ll want to consume at least 1 quart (1 liter) of green smoothie every day on an empty stomach. All my recipes make between 5 and 6 cups. You’ll probably also notice that there are a few hundred calories in these smoothies. That’s actually a good thing! Fill up on healthy stuff rather than cheeseburgers.

Let me know what you think of this one. Beet greens are better for you than the roots and they’re easy to prepare.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Kiwi – the tart tango!

If you like ‘em tart, this is a great combo! It’s kind of like green apples in a way, it’s got a kick to it. It’s something that should be tried, but it’s not something that you’d want to consume every day. Yet, I bet things would be different if I had a kiwi vine of my own and harvested vine ripe fruit and then combined it with sun ripened strawberries from the garden. I’ll bet it would be a completely different experience.

The beauty of this one can’t be matched.

What to mix up:

  • Couple cups strawberries
  • Three pealed kiwi
  • 4-8 little dates (more the better)
  • ½ lb fresh young baby spinach
  • ¾ cup coconut milk (vanilla flavored)
  • 1 little probiotic for good measure.

I love the color contrast between the kiwi and the strawberries. I couldn’t bring myself to add the banana to this one.

Note that I really had to pack that spinach in! It’s also fun watching this one mix. It starts out green and quickly turns pink from the strawberries. Then, as you press the spinach down into the blades it starts to pick up the signature green that we’ve all come to love:

Spinach is wonderful. I wish it were a little cheaper.

See ya next time.

Cherry Smoothie with Lettuce

Cherries are in season! I’ve waited all year for this. There’s something special about cherries that’s similar to the first buds of spring. It’s like you know that the abundance of summer is upon you! It won’t be long before peaches, apricots and pears make their arrival. Thus, I look forward to getting my first green stemmed bounty of wonderful stone fruit.

The other day one of my daughters picked up 10 lbs or so at her local fruit stand. She got a great deal – a fraction of the ‘$5 a pound’ cherries that you find around here. And, they are even better – at least I like to think so.

Last year for father’s day I received a pitter as a gift.

It’s been patiently sitting in the pantry awaiting the work of early summer. Well, I’ve finally got to dig it out.

watch out for the flying juice!

I love this little pitter. It makes fast work of removing the seeds from the fruit – mostly. As it turns out, about 1 in 20 cherries will have a problem being pitted. Thus you have to watch closely as the seed pops through into the catch basin (the handle stem points down towards the little catch basin. You can kind of see it in the picture above). Sometimes, the seed is too big to push through (rarely) so you have to deal with that. And, even after all this checking, I pressed a pair of pits out of one cherry the other morning!  I’ve never seen two pits in one fruit before. That explains why I’ve gotten some ‘wood’ in my green smoothies.

Ultimately wash the cherries, pick off the stems, place them on the pitter and then press the pits out. Afterwards, inspect the berries to make sure all the seeds have been removed.

Oh, also, last year I learned how to tell the fresh picked cherries from the cherries that have been sitting in the store’s fridge for a long time – it’s all about reading the stems!  When cherries are picked, the stems are green. The longer the time they’re off the tree the browner they get. Thus, always look for cherries with green stems.

Now what about breakfast?

These dates are really small

This one gives me a new appreciation of lettuce. At the farmer’s market I found a vendor selling absolutely HUGE heads of romaine lettuce for a couple bucks. Thus, what you see here is only half that plant – yet it still fills the bowl. Next to that is more cherries then you’ll need. I washed these up and only pitted ½ of them.

Ingredients:

  • ½ head huge romaine lettuce (one regular store head)
  • About 3 cups pitted cherries
  • 8 little dates (like this one sweet)
  • 1 banana (thought I might need two, but I pitted enough cherries)
  • ¾ cup coconut milk (or juice or water)
  • 1 little probiotic.

Just pile the ingredients in the blender and grind away. It might take a couple spins to get all the lettuce fed into the blender. I usually grind up the fruit first – just to get it turning and add a big handful of lettuce. I spin that in and then add more lettuce until I’ve got it ground in the roughest sense. Then, I flip the blender on high and start counting. About 60 seconds is good.

When all’s said and done, you end up with a browner “green smoothie”. And my signature green smoothie container with finished product…

Love the color and texture!

The key to this smoothie is adding enough cherries. The taste of cherries is fairly mild, thus you have to really go overboard. If you think adding 3 cups cherries will be more than enough, you might be in for a surprise when you add another cup or so.

I can’t wait for the cheaper boxes of cherries to come on sale! At that point, I’ll take a Saturday afternoon to pit, package and freeze what I’ll need for the entire year.

Give this one a try – you’ll be surprised.