Raw Beet Orange Strawberry Smoothie

It never gets old sharing my experience with raw green smoothies! I know that out of all the things I’ve consumed over the last few years, the greens in the smoothies have helped me regain a youthfulness that I thought I’d lost. The best part about this is that I’ve actually experienced it. I’m pretty sure that it would also work for you!

It never seems to get old posting another raw green smoothie recipe on the blog. Even though they can start looking the same, each one is a different set if experiences, flavors and textures. This one has the excitement of strawberries with an after taste of orange. The beet greens give it a little bit of a wild ride.

If you’ve got a collection of beets you haven’t harvested from the garden, you might be able to give this one a go and see how easy it is for yourself. If not, Swiss Chard or Spinach might be really good substitutes. Just make sure you use a large amount of greens! Remember, the health benefits come from the greens.

Recipe:

  • 2 Oranges seeds removed
  • 10-12 Frozen (or even better – fresh) strawberries
  • 1 cup Orange juice
  • 2 Medjool dates (seeds removed)
  • 1 Large bunch beet greens

Place all the fruit in your high powered blender and grind it up for a few seconds. If you put the orange slices in first things will break down faster (even though it only takes a couple seconds). Next, add the greens.

The liquid fruit will flow up and around to fill all the empty space in the greens making it pretty easy to place a blender full of greens into a blender full of fruit purée. Blend for 60 seconds or more. If you’re using frozen fruit, you might let it go a little longer in order to warm it above freezing. It’s a lot easier to consume if it’s not ice cold.

The oranges take on the pink color given up by the strawberries only to be overwhelmed by the red of the bet green stems. But in any case, it’s easy to drink and filling!

Enjoy!

Melt in your mouth Raw Granola

I normally don’t like granola. It’s not the taste of it that bothers me but, rather, how my body processes it. Even though I chew everything like a million times, something just doesn’t digest the best as it goes through me. All the power bars that are packed with dense calorie based ‘nutrition’ I usually just leave on the shelf.

Well, the other day I decided to give a raw version a try. I’m not sure what attracted me to the recipe, but it felt like the thing to do so I gave the “It’s RAW granola …. gRAWnola time!!!!” recipe from The Raw Seed website a try.

The thing that stands out about this recipe is that it’s mainly sunflower seeds, pumpkin (squash) seeds and raisins!  No grains, no nuts and a little bit of flavorings. Meredith, from The Raw Seed, calls this recipe Cinnamon Raisin Banana Granola. I would call it Orange Raisin Banana Granola with a hint of cinnamon!

Recipe:

Visit The Raw Seed Websites Granola recipe.

Meredith mentions that “using sprouted seeds is optional.” Well, I took that option.

As you can see, I made a little modification to the recipe. Not only did I add a few almonds, but I also added the two cups raisins to water to rehydrate them.

Sticking with the ‘option’ on the recipe, After getting the seeds started and rinsing them off really well, they went straight into the dehydrator until the next day.

I don’t have any pictures of mixing this stuff, but that all happened in the food processor. I ran the seeds just long enough to break some of them down but not all of them.

After placing the dry ingredients in the big mixing bowl, I rain the rest of the ingredients through the Vita-mix. That’s where the soaked raisins really broke down well.

Another thing that I did that was a slight variation on the recipe is that I used a little extra orange juice. Next time I’d probably just through a pealed orange in the mix for the pulp would probably to the mixture good.

After 12 hours per side, you get crunchy granola!

When Lori tasted this, her eyes lit up. I think I remember her saying something like: Hey, I could eat this stuff! Can you tell she has some reservations with regards to some of the things that I experiment with? Not everything is good enough to blog about! Lol…

Lunch time!  I think I’ll nibble on some homemade raw granola!  Thanks Meredith for sharing!