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.

Peach Grape Lettuce

With Coconut ice cubes to really give it a zing! I don’t think I could stress it enough, if you get a chance to pick up fresh coconuts always save the extra juice (water) and freeze it into cubes. They’re oily, refreshing and flavorful for just about any smoothie.

Garden lettuce also makes a big hit with just about any smoothie. Pick out more than you think you’d eat – more than a store bought bundle – and you’ll get a full bodied smoothie everytime.

  • 6 fresh coconut ice cubes
  • 2 peaches
  • 6 to 7 little dates
  • Handful grapes (as ripe as you can get)
  • Bowl fresh garden lettuce
  • 1 little probiotic

As you can see, I must have been a little hungry when I started this smoothie for I noticed that as I started filling the blender, I really didn’t need three peaches nor all those grapes. The main idea with the smoothies is to get good tasting greens into your system (body), so cutting out some fruit is not a bad thing!

Even after running the blender on high for a minute, the ingredients didn’t reduce in size at all!  In fact, I think they actually grew!

It’s not bad having a little extra. Just make sure that when you eat it, the smoothie mixes well with the saliva in your mouth so it digests fully.  And, stop drinking when your body says your full.  It’s ok to not drink it all at once. Take your time. Enjoy it!

Blueberry Coconut Sorbet

Looks like blueberry treats are the in thing for me this week.  Lol.  I wonder if I’ll start turning blue like the bad girl in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? As it turns out, I drank a little too much carrot juice last spring and noticed that my skin started to pick up the color of carrots. I think I’d rather turn blue.

This Blueberry Sorbet is to die for! When I served this to my daughter a couple days ago, her first words where “Oh my God” as the semi-frozen cream melted in her mouth. She couldn’t get over how fresh it tasted. It’s definitely decadent.

I’ve been making this for a while and it freezes great. If you make too much (which I try to always do) you just pour it into a Tupperware container (or Glad or whatever) and place it in the freezer. Make sure you freeze it in single serving sizes because it doesn’t serve up like ice cream.

So here we go. I will assure you that it’s definitely worth your time here.

The Young Thai Coconut water ice cubes make this!

The list of ingredients is really simple:

  • 6 Young Thai Coconut water ice cubes
  • ½ – ¾ cup coconut milk (vanilla flavor)
  • Frozen blueberries
  • Raw Agave

Ok, this one will take a little creative writing for I don’t normally measure how much I use of everything when I whip this up. Thus the next picture may help.

4 cups berries, 3/4 up coconut milk (I think), 6 ice cubes and agave

Looks like I put in about four cups frozen berries. Because they are hard and cold, they will blend down a bit. I think the finished amount was about 3 cups. With the agave, you put in as much as you would like – for me, it’s a squirt about 2 seconds log. I would guess about 2 tablespoons worth.

When blending, start slow and work your way up (speed wise). You’ll definitely have to work this one. The berries will not want to drop into the blades so you’ll have to coax them. I end up turning the blender on and off a number of times as I work this mixture with the Vita-mix supplied plunger.

But the end result is definitely worth it!

Just Amazing!

The real trick with this one is the young Thai Coconut milk (water) that you freeze into ice cubes. The recipe is definitely not the same if you pass on this process. Thus, the next time you make Coconut Cream Pie, save the extra water in ice cube trays knowing that it won’t be long before you’ll be making this amazing sorbet! Also note that the Coconut Cream Pie posting has information about opening coconuts that you might want to review if you haven’t opened them before.

I have to admit that the best part about making this recipe is that it’s really fast. You don’t have to soak anything or thaw anything, you just drop it all in and blend it up.

This frozen blueberry roll that I’ve been on makes me think that I’ve got to get to the store and buy some more fresh fruit! It’s cherry season and I shouldn’t be spending my time with frozen stuff. The fresh stuff only (really) comes around for a short time every year. I’ve got to take advantage of it.

Try this and let me know what you think.