Peaches – Page 3 – Genuine Observations

Peach, Watermelon, Beet greens Smoothie

September 14, 2010September 20, 2010 by Dave

I love it when I can harvest a half dozen beets the size of baseballs and get enough greens for two smoothies. I also love 24 lbs peaches for $7.50. What a screaming deal. The abundance this year looks to be peaches and beet greens.

Even through the base ingredients are the same, the smoothies don’t have to all taste the same day after day. In this case, the difference between this smoothie and the previous day’s smoothie is that I’m adding sesame milk to make it more like a milk shake.

Recipe:

3 peaches
1 inch slice watermelon ½ way through the fruit (seedless)
4 to 5 little dates
Big handful beat greens from the garden
1 ½ cups sesame milk (with pulp)

Combine all ingredients into the blender with the wettest items on the bottom.

Turns out that when putting this one together, I had to spin the fruit before adding the greens.

If you look closely, I like to spin the fruit just long enough to get it turning and then stop. The less you time you spend running the blender, the less heat you generate. Thus, I want to turn the greens for a minute so I spend as little time as possible getting the fruit to turn.

The end result, once again, looks a bit muddy. This is beets we’re talking about even if it’s just the tops!

When it really comes down to it, beet greens are really good for you. They have a metric butt ton of vitamin A and K along with Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium. Even if the greens are not the ‘stored sunlight’, they are the chlorophyll factories. And as we’ve seen before (Is food another form of light?), the chlorophyll molecule is a great molecule to consume.

Peach Grape Lettuce

September 14, 2010September 20, 2010 by Dave

With Coconut ice cubes to really give it a zing! I don’t think I could stress it enough, if you get a chance to pick up fresh coconuts always save the extra juice (water) and freeze it into cubes. They’re oily, refreshing and flavorful for just about any smoothie.

Garden lettuce also makes a big hit with just about any smoothie. Pick out more than you think you’d eat – more than a store bought bundle – and you’ll get a full bodied smoothie everytime.

6 fresh coconut ice cubes
2 peaches
6 to 7 little dates
Handful grapes (as ripe as you can get)
Bowl fresh garden lettuce
1 little probiotic

As you can see, I must have been a little hungry when I started this smoothie for I noticed that as I started filling the blender, I really didn’t need three peaches nor all those grapes. The main idea with the smoothies is to get good tasting greens into your system (body), so cutting out some fruit is not a bad thing!

Even after running the blender on high for a minute, the ingredients didn’t reduce in size at all! In fact, I think they actually grew!

It’s not bad having a little extra. Just make sure that when you eat it, the smoothie mixes well with the saliva in your mouth so it digests fully. And, stop drinking when your body says your full. It’s ok to not drink it all at once. Take your time. Enjoy it!

Peach Lettuce Watermelon smoothie

July 25, 2010September 20, 2010 by Dave

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!

IMG_7903_watermelon — 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:

IMG_7906_ingredients — 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.

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!