Here’s a slight twist on my favorite cherry smoothie. This one is a bit creamier from the coconut milk that tends to mellow it out. It’s really easy if you’ve already prepared the pitted cherries!
1 to 1 ½ cups coconut milk with vanilla flavoring
About 1 inch pineapple (in this case 2 but only half the round)
A few small dates (in this case about 6 to counter the pineapple)
About 2 cups cherries (the more the better!)
One bowl fresh garden Swiss chard
If you’ve got a great high powered blender, stack it all up like this:
And then give it a whirl for about 60 seconds. That is, after you’ve used the tamper to press the greens down into the blades and the entire mixture is turning on its own. Eventually, you’ll have a bit more than a quart to enjoy!
If you find a cherry smoothie combination that really stands out, I’d like to hear about it. I’ve always got a few extra little cherries sitting around just waiting to be enjoyed in a great new taste senstation!
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):
Three tips of fresh mint (about three pairs of leaves each)
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!
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.
(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.
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.
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.
