Bananas

Cherry Swiss chard Smoothie with Cacao

It’s been a while since I posted a smoothie recipe, so it looks like today is a great day to share with the world a cherry concoction with one of my favorite base ingredients – Honeydew melon! If there’s one thing that I’ve learned that makes a smoothie really stand out, it’s the liquid base that you use. To me, water just doesn’t cut it.

I know all the purists state that the green smoothie that you make should  be as simple as possible. But if it doesn’t taste fantastic, where are you going to find the motivation to keep making them? I mean, really think about it. If you’re going out of your way to make something that’s generally not cheap, wouldn’t you really want to make it enjoyable?

Well, this one is!

  • About 1 ½ cups fresh pitted cherries
  • 1 banana
  • 1 ½ cups fresh honeydew melon juice
  • 4 little dates
  • About a heaping spoon full raw cacao
  • Small amount Vanilla powder (just part of a teaspoon)
  • One bowl garden fresh Swiss chard

For this year, this recipe is being posted after cherry season has come and gone, but if you were lucky enough to store some away, you’ll still be able to make it while the Honeydew melon are plentiful. Swiss chard can still be found in stores (as it can year round) so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Take note that this quantity will fill the blender!

This one always turns out brown from the mixture of green and red. And, if you look close, you’ll be able to see that I didn’t run this one as long as I normally do – there are little pieces of cherry still visible. Yum. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Cherry Chocolate Swiss chard Smoothie

Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve had the opportunity to share on the blog here. The road has taken many-a-turns, but I’ve barely been able to sit down and relax for a couple weeks now. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to shrug off the stress. Could it be that the green smoothies are helping? Maybe it’s the fresh garden greens. But in any case, as long as I’m still feeling good, it doesn’t matter what’s the source of the goodness really is. Sometimes I like to think that it’s the time spent weeding and watering the garden. Other times, it’s just breathing the fresh air on the back deck while listening to the birds singing in the trees.

Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder if it’s the anandamide in the cacao that I’ve added to this smoothie!

Melon juice makes this one!

So here we go.

  • Almost 2 cups Honeydew melon juice
  • About 2 cups pitted cherries
  • One banana
  • Four little dates
  • A spoon full cacao
  • About ¼ teaspoon vanilla powder
  • Bunch of garden fresh Swiss chard

Add everything into the blender starting with the wettest stuff first.

Looks like half fruit

Keep the speed fairly low until you get the mixture to start turning. After that, flip it on hit and count to about 60.

The creamy result

The end result is amazingly creamy with a full cherry BANG! It’s like a cherry tootsie pop. The Honey drew draws out the favor of the fresh cherries to really make them stand out.

This recipe is a total keeper for me. It’s too bad that I don’t have a larger store of cherries, for I’d be making this one way more often. Yet, then again, if I simply made this one over and over again, I’d miss out on all the other great fruit that comes out midsummer!

Planted some more lettuce, spinach and beets with the intention of making those my late fall smoothie greens. Hope they come up in this heat.

Enjoy.

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!