Medjool dates

Vegas Style Green Smoothie with Spinach

Hi Everyone, I know it’s been a while since I posted a green smoothie recipe. The last half year, or so, has felt like a rerun of the previous few years when it comes to creating new green smoothie recipes. But today is a little different.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a friend that I would look into changing the base for my smoothies in order to make it something that would be a little friendlier for her new-found diet and her new-found restricted income. Basically, she didn’t like the idea of using juice as a base and her friend was allergic to coconut milk. Juice can also be expensive. To me, those are two really good base liquids that greatly enhance the flavor of smoothies. I don’t mind spending a little more for that enhancement.

So, I’m making an effort to remove some of the cost along with reducing the calories.

To do this, welcome Tea! Not just any tea, but your favorite tea! In my case, it’s Sweet Oolong Revolution from Teavana. You can find it on Teavana’s tea wall here. Notice they’ve got White, Green, Oolong, Black, Red and Herbal tea blends. They’re generally not cheap, but they sure are good. 

The best part about these particular teas is that they’re full of flavor. The Sweet Oolong Revolution tea has a hint of cinnamon which really caries through the smoothie. Because the key to a good smoothie is a flavorful base, these teas serve that function well.

Recipe:

2 apples

  • 4 Medjool dates
  • 2 cups seedless grapes
  • 2 bananas
  • 1 cup almond milk
  • 1+ cup Sweet Oolong Revolution tea (chilled)
  • 1lb Baby spinach

I like to place the soft fruit first. That way I’ll quickly get some mass in the blender that will suck down the harder fruit (like apples).

After you’ve worked the chunks out, it’s time to pack in the greens. It’s amazing how many leaves you can press into the blender as the liquid fills in all around it.

You might need to help the blender get through the ‘plug’ of leaves. But once you do, breakfast is only 60 seconds away!

Note that this recipe makes a little more than 2 quarts. If it was just for me, I’d cut the ingredient list in half.

It’s also interesting to note that apples give a fluff to green smoothies that other fruit doesn’t do. Notice all the air in the jar? After I let this mixture sit for an hour (made before yoga, consumed afterwards) the volume was reduced almost a cup.

Banana’s a cinnamon go together very well. Even though there are extra dates added, the mixture comes across as being a bit more savory than sweet.

If you have a favorite tea that you’d love to see mixed into a smoothie, let me know.

Oh, almost forgot. A long time ago I came across a video describing a Vegas Style Smoothie. I did a quick search and found this by the Renegade Health Show.

At one time I was an advocate for putting lots of different powders in my smoothie. But it just doesn’t make sense to me any longer. I’m all about simplicity and ease. Yet, I did make one association in this video and that was Tea with Vegas! I’ve forever thought of Vegas Smoothies as being Tea based. I guess I should have thought of them as being over the top with 40+ ingredients.

Oh well. I don’t know of anyone that’s explicitly calling tea based smoothies anything different. Thus, to me, they are Green Smoothies Vegas Style!

See ya soon…

Raw Cacao Fruit Balls

It’s been a while, but I’ve found another recipe that’s once again worth sharing. I’ve seen versions of this one on different videos and blogs over the years, but I’ve never really gotten around to reproducing them or playing with the flavors. That is, I’ve always tried to over complicate the treat by trying to make it more like a conventional truffle. Well, it doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it should be simple.

There are three things that really stand out about this recipe. 1) Its easy. 2) It tastes great and 3) it will keep you wired for hours! I’m really shocked at how wired someone can get off just a little raw cacao. I make it a point now to not eat these any later than about three in the afternoon. If not, well, you’ll find it really easy to not fall asleep in the evening. I guess if I was going out, this would be the perfect pre-function snack.

Recipe:

  • 1 cup dried fruit. (In this case Apricots, in previous cases cherries)
  • 8 large medjool dates
  • ¼ cup cacao
  • 2-3 Tablespoons Almond butter
  • ½ cup raw almonds
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla powder
  • 1 teaspoon coconut oil
  • Pinch sea salt

Add the dried fruit to the food processor first and chop until it’s as fine as possible. Apricots tend to break up into little square pieces. Cherries break down further, but the idea is to get it broken down while it’s still mostly dry. Next, add the vanilla powder, salt and Almond butter. Spin the food processor a bit longer. The mixture should break down even more. After it starts to stick together a little, add the dates and coconut oil. It won’t take long after that before you’ve got a big ball of paste.

It might actually feel more like fudge. This batch felt and tasted a bit like the filling in a Fig Newton. It was a bit tacky, yet kind of dry when it was pulled apart. As you can see, I piled it up on a plate and then reused the food processor to break down the raw almonds. You want to break them down into very small pieces, but not as fine as flower.

I didn’t take a picture, but at this point I rolled the ‘fudge’ into little round balls. I like them small. If they are too big, everyone wants to bite them in half and then crumbs fall all over the place. If they are small, it’s just one bite and no mess!

Note that the almond crumbs are for rolling the balls in. It makes them easy to pick up for the oil in the mixture will get on your figures, but not if there is a coating of something to block it.

This recipe makes a couple dozen (as you can see in the picture).

I love the fact that I can take a half hour and make a plate full of snacks for the week. I’ll probably take 4 or 5 a day everyday for lunch until they’re gone. I couldn’t tell you the count of calories, but I get the feeling that it’s not too bad. The cacao in it makes for a great pick-me-up after lunch. I can see myself making a lot more of these in the coming months. The only really tricky ingredient is the almond butter. Yet, I figure I’ve got ½ a jar left so I can make a couple more batches!

You are what you eat! – Thus, I must be a little nutty! 

See you soon.

Triple Berry Swiss Chard Smoothie

Seems that it’s getting harder and harder to find uniquely new green smoothies to post! But, it’s still possible and I’ve found another! This triple berry smoothie is a delight – flavorful and rich. You’ll want to give it a try.

A couple weeks ago, I started to cut down on coconut milk in my green smoothies. Sure, it provides great texture and flavor, but I wanted to remove a little fat – or, rather – move the fat consumption to later in the day. With the green smoothies, I wanted to get back to just greens and fruit.

But I still don’t recommend water as the base, thus for the last few days I’ve been playing around with “Help Nourish Your Brian” (lol) juice.  Not wanting to put the extra work into making juice for the base, I’ve taken the easy way out by using commercial juice. But what’s special about this juice is that it tastes like pomegranates. It actually has a pretty strong flavor.

And, well, that’s what I’m looking for! This particular juice accentuates the “Nature’s Three Berries” mixture (blueberries, raspberries and blackberries). When you use the strong dark juice, it adds to the berry flavor in this smoothie. This strong flavor definitely covers up the Swiss Chard flavor (beet flavor) that’s typically hard to hide.

I’ve made this one for the last couple days and it’s not getting old. I highly recommend it for you’ll find it easy to get extra greens this way!

Recipe:

  • 2 cups mixed berries (frozen)
  • 2 oranges (seedless)
  • 4 medjool dates
  • ½ berry flavored probiotic
  • 1 cup pomegranate juice
  • 1 large bowl Swiss Chard

Remove the seeds from the dates and peal the oranges and add all the fruit to the blender.

Give it a spin for 15 seconds or so. It will come out like ice-cream!

Be careful pressing in all the greens. It will take some muscle, but you don’t want to splash the mixture onto your clothes – this stuff is natural dye! Once the greens are packed in, blend until smooth. You’ll want to let this one run for a while in order to really break down the seeds. Because the seeds are frozen, you can run this one for a while. Feel the side of the blender. If you feel any heat, you’ve definitely run it long enough!

The recipe I list here makes 2 quarts. When they taste this good, I find a way to work the second quart into my day. Note that the oranges are ‘filler’ so if you don’t want as much, cut back on the volume of orange you add in!

There are so many great tasting green smoothies that I’ll bet I’ll be posting new recipes for years! I can’t wait for cherry season; it’s just around the corner. I’m sure it would do well as the berry mixture in this recipe!

Consume life, be life, give life – light is life!

Blueberry Orange Apple Spinach Smoothie

Well, I have to say that it’s been a while! Sometimes, there’s so much to do in life that finding the time to reflect upon what you’ve done in a blog post doesn’t always work out! If this spring is bringing energy your way that is anything like what I’m seeing, you might also be finding that it’s more work than play. But I’m ok with that. Life is full of cycles, this one just happens to be more work related!

But work doesn’t take me away from my ritualistic green smoothie! Virtually every day I take time to mix up and enjoy some concoction that enlightens my entire morning. It’s just too easy! And they make me feel good.  J

This particular smoothie lifted my spirit for a number of days in a row and I don’t know how anyone can say that that’s a bad thing. It felt good. Yet I know, some people like to vary what they consume every day. That’s good. But when I find something I like, I love it when I can stick with it for a few days to really stretch out the positive effects. This time, I was lucky enough to have all the ingredients in a ready state to go for this smoothie. When I pause to really thing about this, I believe that the stability and longevitiy of the fruit in this smoothie is what makes this one so easy – everything is ready to go!

I can’t quite pinpoint what it is exactly that I love about this one, but it’s chilly (from the frozen blueberries), saucy (from the apples) and full bodied (from the oranges). There is a smoothness from the spinach that is offset by the grittiness of the seeds (from the blueberries) that makes it more than a drink and more than satisfying on the tummy.

Recipe:

  • 1 Apple
  • 2 Oranges
  • 3-5 Medjool dates (remove the seeds)
  • 1-2 cups frozen blueberries (the more the better)
  • ½ cup Mango flavor Good Belly Probiotic
  • 1 cup Coconut Milk (with Vanilla)
  • ½ lb baby Spinach

The beautiful thing about these smoothies is that you just toss everything in the blender and let it fly (on high) for 60 seconds or so.

The volume and weight from the liquid will easily pull down the light fluffy spinach so it won’t take much to get all this to liquidate.

Oranges are for volume – and they are a little cooling so make sure it’s a warmer day if you add more. In the end, you’ve got breakfast and lunch – or smoothie to share – which is what I do!

This fruit combination does really well with Swiss Chard, so if you’ve hit your limit with Spinach, you can add in chard and enjoy the combination for another few days!

Stay light-spirited – for the moment is what you make of it!

Raw Chocolate Dipped Truffles

Today, winter officially arrived with a morning rain and afternoon snowstorm. It was just above freezing, so what fell came down in large flakes and quickly covered everything. Fortunately the cloud only took an hour to pass by so the snowpack came in around a half inch. It’s beautiful to look at, but you don’t want to venture out.

Thus, it’s a great day to make truffles! … and eat them too!

A few days ago I went hunting for a really easy raw truffle recipe that would only take a half hour or so from start to finish. I looked around a bit, but didn’t find anything that caught my eye until I visited Lisa’s Raw on $10 a Day (or less!) blog. If you haven’t noticed, that blog has been linked in here for nearly a year! I love her commitment to the blog and how well she puts together the artwork. It’s just fun to read and beautiful to look at.

Yet, anyway, if you scroll back a bit in her blog, you’ll find that on the 2nd, the menu included a dessert – Double Chocolate Truffles! When I saw what she posted, I immediately new that I’d found the truffles I’d been looking for.

Today, everything came together in such a fine way that I got to make this recipe my own. And yes, they are as good as they look – but I couldn’t settle for just eight, so I kind of doubled the recipe. I wanted to give away a few and cut down on the chocolate just a little (I’m virtually out now, … need to visit Raw Vegan Source again). Too much raw chocolate will keep you up all night. So I almost doubled everything that Lisa shared with the world (except the cacao). Here is my version!

Recipe – Raw Chocolate Dipped Truffles:

Truffle balls:

  • 1 cup soaked (dried) raw almonds
  • ½ cup raisins
  • ½ cup (8) medjool dates (pitted)
  • 3 tablespoons cacao powder
  • Scrapings of the inside of one vanilla bean
  • Pinch salt

Chocolate Dip:

  • 4 Tablespoons melted raw coconut oil
  • 4 Tablespoons raw agave
  • 4 Tablespoons Raw cacao powder

Soak a bit more than a cup of almonds for 4-6 hours before starting. Rinse and dry completely so as to not add any water to the mixture (cacao and water don’t mix).

To make the balls, add the almonds, raisins, salt and scrapings from the inside of the vanilla bean into the food processor and grind up. After you’ve worked it a bit, add the dates. You’ll need to play with it a bit in order to really get it broken down nicely. Once it’s nice and smooth, roll into small truffles and place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. You just want to get them cold, not frozen. Meanwhile, it gives you time to cleanup and put together the dip.

For the dip, add all three ingredients (oil, agave and cacao powder) and quickly mix. It doesn’t take much, but make sure you don’t have lumpy cacao. That makes mixing it up a little harder to do.

After the balls have cooled and your chocolate dip is ready, roll the bottom of the cold truffle through the melted chocolate and place it on parchment paper. The coconut oil should quickly firm up. It might take a couple more minutes in the freezer, but they’ll look like this:

And as you can see from the first picture (way above), I thoroughly enjoyed that treat! The ball is mildly sweet and a soft nutty chew. You have to hunt for the vanilla and the chocolate flavor is tame allowing you to actually discern the raisins. The Chocolate glaze is powerfully dark and rich. It makes you want to suck on it just a bit before chewing through the rest of it.

This is truly a winter time treat!

Oh, I never like throwing out anything – especially when it comes to raw chocolate!

I just happened to have a few soaked almonds left over that I rolled through the bowl that I used for dipping the truffles and I wound up with … turtles!

These were amazing too! These were the first things to disappear. There is something about sweet chocolate on almonds that I just can’t pass up. Now, if I’d just used cacao butter rather than coconut, these would have firmed up at room temperature. But no worries for they disappeared within about five minutes!

These truffles really did mix up fast with no fuss. I’d highly recommend them if you’ve got a craving!

Make and experience joy – these truffles just might help!