Peaches

Parsley, Peach, Pear Smoothie

Day two and I get to enjoy this combination a second time! What a bumper harvest I’m experiencing this year – that is, for greens! I guess I went out of my way to make sure there were enough greens to last all season. And, as you can see from the collection of smoothies lately, all the greens have been from the garden!

But you’ve got to try this combination. Yum.

Recipe:

  • 2 peaches
  • 2 pears
  • 4 little dates
  • Good size bunch of parsley
  • 1 little probiotic (optional)

If you ask me, this is a can’t lose mixture. Of course, parsley is probably my favorite green and the peach- pear combination is my favorite fruit combo, so this one is just made in heaven.

Combine everything into the blender with wet fruit on the bottom.

After sixty seconds you’ll get the best smoothie ever!

If you drink this one with a straw, you’re going to have a hard time sucking it through. It will go through for it’s so fine, but you could hold it sideways and it will pour like ketchup – slow and steady. If you want to give it a little more flow, add half cup water during the blend.

Enjoy!

Peach Watermelon Lettuce Smoothie

I love how watermelon simply blends up into … pink water! If you have a vertically seedless watermelon lying around and a bowl full of lettuce, this will save you a half hour of chewing time. If there’s one thing the blender does well, that’s preprocess food!

This smoothie’s really simple:

Recipe:

  • 2 peaches
  • 6 little dates
  • 1 inch slice of watermelon
  • 1 bowl lettuce (fresh garden lettuce if it’s available)

Cut the watermelon into small enough chunks to fit into the bottom of the blender. If they are too big, it will take a while to get the entire mixture to spin. Once the littler chunks start to move, the force of the moving water(melon) will bring down the other fruit and it won’t take long before it’s green mush.

As it turns out, this mixture made up almost two quart containers! Watermelon really goes a long way. Make sure you have a friend over for breakfast if you mix this one up.

Peach, Apricot, lettuce smoothie

It took a while, but I finally found some ripe apricots! I love these little orange dry-ish type fruit. One day I’d like to have a apricot tree in my backyard that would offer up sweet ripe golden nuggets like I found here.

I guess, since I’m at it, I’d love to have a full collection of fruit trees in my back yard. I’ve been putting it off for years now, but I know that the next place I move to will have room so that I can put in 20-30 different trees with a wide verity of fruit. I’ll have apples, pears, plums and figs as the base trees. To that, depending on the type of weather the area will have, I’d add peaches, apricots and cherries. Between all the trees, I’d grow different berries – raspberries that is.

Back to the smoothie.

Recipe:

  • 2 peaches
  • 4 to 5 ripe apricots
  • Bowl garden lettuce
  • 1 ½ cup watermelon juice

This is going to make a bit more than one quart.

But it will be runny. The watermelon gives is a light watery texture that makes it really easy to drink. You almost have to slow yourself down so that the mouthful’s mix with saliva adequately. You always want to make sure you ‘chew’ your smoothies to activate your saliva glands to really pump out the digestive enzymes. You don’t want to miss any of this wonderful nutrition!

I think I’ll make this one again!

Kale, Peach, Watermelon Smoothie

Kale is one of those amazing garden plants. You can plant it just about anywhere and you’ll get something that stands up big and strong. I’m sure it’s got ‘weed’ in its ancestral tree somewhere. The plants that came up in my garden this year took a while to come on, but when they did, a hand full of leaves really was all that it took.

But look at that, I’m writing as if the plants are dead and gone. Far from it! I just pick the bottom leaves and let the plant keep growing. They are all three feet tall now and still pumping out leaves. I fully expect that these will be the last greens that I get out of the garden this fall. Next year, I’m going to put in MORE and get enough to make kale chips. But that’s a posting for another day.

Recipe:

  • 2 peaches
  • Juice of 1 lemon (no seeds)
  • 1 inch wide slice of watermelon
  • 8 to 10 Kale leaves
  • 1 probiotic (optional)

I don’t like to add lemon seeds to my smoothies so I cut them in half and squeeze them over a bowl. Once I’ve extracted all the juice, I remove the seeds with a spoon before dumping the juice into the blender. It seems that life is just easier that way. 

Notice that the watermelon has nearly filled the blender. I spun the fruit for a few seconds before removing the top to add the kale. When adding the kale, I pick off the leaf and leave being most of the steam. But I’m willing to bet that the stem is where the bulk of the metals are, for it’s a pretty stiff stem and, for some reason, it reminds me of bone.

In sixty seconds, the blend makes easy work of this chewing concoction. The lemon juice if a must here. It counters the bitters in the kale with the acids from the citrus. Once these two balance each other out, it’s just a matter of adding a little sweetener – dates!

I’m sure I’ll have more of these come this fall when the weather really turns cold. If I had a little more gardening room, I’d grow a plant for you two.

Beet greens Peach and Watermelon Smoothie

Every year there’s one crop that stands out better than all the others in the garden. This year, I’ve been blessed with beets! What a wonderful veggie. Most people grow them for the wonderful bulb, but I put them in specifically for the greens! I like the fact that the greens are not really bitter and the pests don’t like them like lettuce of spinach. They are also pretty hardy. You can take off for a week and know that your plants will still be alive when you get back. They may have wilted a bit, but a gentle watering brings them right back to life.

Another great part about beets is that you can pinch off leaves while the plants growing and you don’t have to worry about losing the ‘bulb’ crop. As long as you get sunlight hours, the plant will keep pumping captured sunlight into the bulb so you can enjoy the juice (mixed with carrots and celery) later in the year.

But for now, I’m getting smoothie after smoothie with nutrient rich leaves that look like this:

Recipe:

  • 3 peaches
  • Watermelon (about 1 inch slice ½ way through)
  • 5 to 6 little dates
  • Probiotic (optional)

You’ll have to notice that I didn’t add any water or juice to this smoothie. The watermelon is going to provide all we need.

Just make sure you place the watermelon on the bottom for it’s not until that gets ground up that anything else starts. I love just being able to through watermelon in as the base without having to juice it before hand. Normally, I’ll juice up a watermelon and get 4 quarts that last a few days. This way, I get just what I want when I want it. It’s like juice to order.

The beet greens always give off a redish color, thus the end result is nearly always brown. If you look closely at this one, you’ll see that it’s pretty creamy. The smoothie is standing up just a little at the top of the jar. I love these drinks thick. Most people don’t. To make it runnier, just add ½ cup water or a bit more watermelon (like a full ½ inch slice).