Raw Green Smoothies

Tropical Grapes with Parsley

It’s an emerald infusion of topical goodness, yet, hold the apple. The flavor combination of this smoothie has held up all week. I guess, when I find something that I like, I can’t help but keep it going as long as I can. This smoothie has now been the mainstay for two pineapples and about 10 lbs of grapes! It’s amazing how fast good fruit disappears.

A couple weeks ago, I got another great deal on grapes at Costco. At the same time, I picked up bananas, pineapple; enough so I wouldn’t have to think about it for a while. The greens I left on the shelf for the fall crop is still producing in the garden. I don’t expect it to last more than a couple more days, but it’s been a fantastic run (part of May, all of June, July, August, September and now nearly a full month of October!). Five months of greens in the Seattle area up at 500 feet is pretty amazing. … can’t wait for next spring to start over again!

I tried this smoothie with Lettuce, Beet Greens, Swiss chard and Collards. The Grapes carried the day with each one of them. Here’s what I started with:

Recipe:

  • 1 inch pineapple peeled and cored.
  • 1 ½ cups seedless rich colored grapes
  • 1 banana
  • 5 cubes coconut milk (Or 1 cup coconut milk from the store)
  • 1 bowl greens, in this case parsley
  • Optional: ORMUS supergreens (for light chlorophyll lettuce days)
  • 1 probiotic

Here, the picture shows the fresh young Thai coconut milk ice cubes. I didn’t have the ice cubes every day, so I used coconut milk from Whole Foods. Throwing all the fruit into the blender, you get this:

If you haven’t noticed, I find that starting the blend with just the fruit helps speed up the process. It also gives me a good feeling for the amount that it will make with it’s done. Thus, if I need to add an apple or banana, I can. And, as you can see in this picture, the apple never made it into this smoothie.

In the end, if you make enough it you’ll have breakfast and part of lunch.

Get out and get some grapes. You’ll love them blended with your favorite greens. It’s all about getting the alkalizing green in and enjoying it in the process.

Drink up!

Swiss Chard, pineapple coconut ice smoothie

This is the Swiss Chard smoothie that I wanted to add to the multi-greens smoothie but didn’t. At the time, it seemed more important to get through the ripe bananas then continue with the smoothie experiment. This is a good smoothie, but in a way, I wish I’d mixed in grapes rather than the bananas. Oh well, maybe next time I’ll cut the grapes and simply go bananas!

Recipe:

  • 6 young fresh Thai Coconut water ice cubes
  • About 1 inch ripe pineapple
  • 2 bananas
  • Bowl garden Swiss chard (washed and ready)
  • ½ cup water.

Pile everything in starting with the soft fruit. Blend for 60 seconds (or more) and serve.

You’ll notice that you’ll get a bit more than a quart. Lori got to enjoy the extra. Swiss chard is a pretty smooth green which mixes well with the banana. The young fresh Thai coconut ice cubes give it a really fresh flavor that you don’t want to leave out. The pineapple seemed to be a bit like filler. But it was good RIPE filler.

This will be a great recipe to revisit come mid winter. I’m not looking forward to buying greens again, but, doesn’t look like I’ll have much of a choice before too long.

Take some time to put this one together, you won’t be disappointed.

Enjoy!

Same fruit, different greens – smoothie

There are times when you know that a different type of green would just mix better with a particular type of fruit, but that opportunity to actually give it a try doesn’t come along very offend. Yet, for me, this last week I was blessed with 5 lbs of amazingly great black grapes, a ripe pineapple and 10 fresh young Thai coconuts! That’s right, 10.

What an amazing deal on coconuts. Last weekend Lori and I stopped into the local Uwajimaya and the first thing we saw was the 10 for $10 posted above the coconuts. Knowing that I wanted to make cacao pudding and smoothies (using the water) I figured 10 was a good round number that we’d be able to put to work.

So, what was Dave’s experiment? Well, it was short lived, and consisted of making the same smoothie using the following different greens: Parsley, Lettuce and Beet Greens.

Recipe:

  • ½ to ¾ cup water
  • 1 inch ripe pineapple
  • Big handful ripe black grapes
  • 6 young fresh Thai coconut water ice cubes
  • Greens of your choice.
  • 1 probiotic optional

They all looked pretty much like this:

And, because I’m an advocate for getting a full day’s worth of greens, I show this blender as being FULL.

The first time, I added Parsley. The parsley in the garden still looks beautiful. The weather has turned a little cooler so it’s pretty much stopped growing, which means it starts to turn bitter. I don’t mind, but Lori simply hates parsley – regardless if it’s bitter or sweet (more for me… lol). I figure I’ve got a week or so before my garden crop turns to mush and I LOVE parsley, thus today, bitter or not, it’s mixed in.

That full blender made a bit more than this quart. The taste was definitely ‘full’ (from the parsley) and sweet (from the grapes). To me, it’s a great combo.

Next day, Beet Greens.

The color is a little more brown form the beets, but the flavor is a lot more smooth. Drinkability wise, this smoothie was better than the parsley based one. Parsley is really strong!

Third day, lettuce.

Notice that big pile of leaves! The lettuce that I planted at the end of July is now bolting. When the plant bolts, the leaves pick up a deeper bitter flavor. Yet, I don’t want to let this bounty go to waste. And, because Lettuce is lower on the mineral charts than the other two, I figured I’d just pile it in.

The end result was the best of the three. Lori liked this one the best, yet the entire mixture is not something that stands out as being a killer-combo. Yet, it meets my goals of making greens consumable!

I wish I’d picked up some spinach or tried the same recipe with Swiss Chard, but I guess I’ll have to wait to finish this experiment another day.

No matter how you look at it, it’s all about masking the off flavors of the greens in a fruit melody that’s not too sweet. This combination of ingredients played out just fine this week so I wanted to share.

Parsley, Peach, Pear Smoothie

The thing that makes this smoothie outstanding is the sesame milk base. Sesame milk is so easy to make and it adds a bitter sweet full bodied texture to the smoothie that doesn’t happen if you simply use water. If you’ve never made sesame milk before, you can read about it in a previous posting here.

I guess the other part I like is the garden fresh parsley! Yes, out of all the greens that I blend up into breakfast food, parsley is my favorite. But it’s not spinach! Everyone loves spinach. Parsley takes a little warming up too, if you know what I mean. Its flavor is much stronger and, if you get the standard curly parsley at the store, it always leaves your mouth feeling like it’s eaten something a little too strong.

That doesn’t happen with this garden parsley. It’s fresh and smooth tasting. Every time I visit the garden, I can’t help but pinch off a couple leaves and chomp them down. I get no negative reaction and my breath is left parsley fresh!

If I could grow more parsley, I’d make it my green of choice.

Recipe:

  • 2 peaches
  • 3 little pears
  • 1 good size bunch parsley
  • 1 ½ cups sesame milk

Notice I didn’t need to add dates to this smoothie!  I LOVE it when the fruit really is ripe and sweet. It makes a huge difference on the resulting flavor of the smoothie. If I haven’t already said this enough – always use ripe fruit!

After I pack all the fruit in and press the greens down hard enough so that I can get the lid on the blender, it sure makes it look like I’ve used a lot of sesame milk.

And look at those parsley leaves!  Yum. This is the broad leaf Italian verity that grows a couple feet tall – but only in warm weather. The plants seem to go on hold if it’s not 70+ outside.

Parsley always turns out thick. You really have to add something like water to get it into a drink like consistency. But for me, I love them thick.

If you’ve never made a parsley smoothie, right now is the best time of year to give it a try. Let me know what you think afterwards.

Parsley, Peach, Pear Smoothie

Day two and I get to enjoy this combination a second time! What a bumper harvest I’m experiencing this year – that is, for greens! I guess I went out of my way to make sure there were enough greens to last all season. And, as you can see from the collection of smoothies lately, all the greens have been from the garden!

But you’ve got to try this combination. Yum.

Recipe:

  • 2 peaches
  • 2 pears
  • 4 little dates
  • Good size bunch of parsley
  • 1 little probiotic (optional)

If you ask me, this is a can’t lose mixture. Of course, parsley is probably my favorite green and the peach- pear combination is my favorite fruit combo, so this one is just made in heaven.

Combine everything into the blender with wet fruit on the bottom.

After sixty seconds you’ll get the best smoothie ever!

If you drink this one with a straw, you’re going to have a hard time sucking it through. It will go through for it’s so fine, but you could hold it sideways and it will pour like ketchup – slow and steady. If you want to give it a little more flow, add half cup water during the blend.

Enjoy!