Frozen bananas really add a cold creamy consistency to just about any smoothie. Yet, when you add a mango to it, you’re doubling your mouth watering experience. Take special note of the watermelon juice that used as the base. I love picking up inexpensive watermelons, juicing them up and drinking it all day long. Yes, it’s a cooling liquid, so make sure you pick out the hottest days if you’re really going to flush your system.
For now, that bowl of lettuce leaves are calling for a quick whirl.
1 mango
2 frozen bananas
6 or 7 little dates (the really small ones)
1 to 1 ½ cup watermelon juice
1 bowl lettuce
One little probiotic
Stack them all up on the blender, if you’ve got a strong one, of slowly feed them in if it’s a more common variety.
In the end, you’ll have a treat that you can savor on your way out of the house in the morning. It’s also a way to get all the greens that you could possibly want in one little meal!
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!
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!
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.
Finally, … A keeper! This is one that I feel really good about sharing. Peaches and Lettuce with a hint of watermelon! Perfect. Green smoothies don’t get much better than this.
If you haven’t noticed, this winter and spring has driven me to using a lot of coconut milk (not raw from whole foods). It makes for a creamy heavier base that adds a little more umph to the smoothie. But what I really love is fresh juice. The oranges and apples this last winter weren’t all that great, but now that summer’s on (somewhere in the world) I’m starting to see melons showing up in the stores. Last weekend, I picked up two little watermelons.
One made this and more!
Pure Watermelon Juice!
You can add the watermelon fruit directly into the smoothie, but I prefer just adding the juice – because I like drinking the juice straight up.
If you don’t have a juicer, I’ve been happy with my Breville JE900 Juice Fountain Professional Juice Extractor. I decided on that model after reading reviews on Amazon and seeing that this model got great reviews regarding cleanup. The cleanup is really simple. So simple in fact that you’ll actually use the machine!
And, as you can see from the picture above, it can take one little watermelon and make a lot of juice.
In any case, here’s what I used for the Peach, Lettuce, Watermelon smoothie:
Peaches, Lettuce, watermelon and a couple dates
As you can see, it was:
3 ripe white Peaches
1 bowl fresh garden lettuce
1 ½ cup fresh watermelon juice
3 little Deglet Noor dates
1 probiotic (optional)
That’s it! After it was all whipped up, I thought that the dates might have been a bit much. If the watermelon where a little closer to being in season, I’d drop the dates altogether.
Looks good!
I love how these white peaches stack up. And the garden lettuce is sweat all by itself. It’s almost too good to blend up into a smoothie. But hey, I’ve got Sooooo much this year that if I’m going to be grateful, the best way of doing that is by letting the lettuce experience being made into a smoothie!
Made a bit over this quart.
And this one was so easy to drink. Unlike smoothies make with harsher greens, this one is worth savoring.
It’s peach season so get out and bring some home. Any Saturday market should also have a ton of fresh greens, so you have no excuse.
