Pineapple

Tropical Grapes with Parsley

It’s an emerald infusion of topical goodness, yet, hold the apple. The flavor combination of this smoothie has held up all week. I guess, when I find something that I like, I can’t help but keep it going as long as I can. This smoothie has now been the mainstay for two pineapples and about 10 lbs of grapes! It’s amazing how fast good fruit disappears.

A couple weeks ago, I got another great deal on grapes at Costco. At the same time, I picked up bananas, pineapple; enough so I wouldn’t have to think about it for a while. The greens I left on the shelf for the fall crop is still producing in the garden. I don’t expect it to last more than a couple more days, but it’s been a fantastic run (part of May, all of June, July, August, September and now nearly a full month of October!). Five months of greens in the Seattle area up at 500 feet is pretty amazing. … can’t wait for next spring to start over again!

I tried this smoothie with Lettuce, Beet Greens, Swiss chard and Collards. The Grapes carried the day with each one of them. Here’s what I started with:

Recipe:

  • 1 inch pineapple peeled and cored.
  • 1 ½ cups seedless rich colored grapes
  • 1 banana
  • 5 cubes coconut milk (Or 1 cup coconut milk from the store)
  • 1 bowl greens, in this case parsley
  • Optional: ORMUS supergreens (for light chlorophyll lettuce days)
  • 1 probiotic

Here, the picture shows the fresh young Thai coconut milk ice cubes. I didn’t have the ice cubes every day, so I used coconut milk from Whole Foods. Throwing all the fruit into the blender, you get this:

If you haven’t noticed, I find that starting the blend with just the fruit helps speed up the process. It also gives me a good feeling for the amount that it will make with it’s done. Thus, if I need to add an apple or banana, I can. And, as you can see in this picture, the apple never made it into this smoothie.

In the end, if you make enough it you’ll have breakfast and part of lunch.

Get out and get some grapes. You’ll love them blended with your favorite greens. It’s all about getting the alkalizing green in and enjoying it in the process.

Drink up!

Swiss Chard, pineapple coconut ice smoothie

This is the Swiss Chard smoothie that I wanted to add to the multi-greens smoothie but didn’t. At the time, it seemed more important to get through the ripe bananas then continue with the smoothie experiment. This is a good smoothie, but in a way, I wish I’d mixed in grapes rather than the bananas. Oh well, maybe next time I’ll cut the grapes and simply go bananas!

Recipe:

  • 6 young fresh Thai Coconut water ice cubes
  • About 1 inch ripe pineapple
  • 2 bananas
  • Bowl garden Swiss chard (washed and ready)
  • ½ cup water.

Pile everything in starting with the soft fruit. Blend for 60 seconds (or more) and serve.

You’ll notice that you’ll get a bit more than a quart. Lori got to enjoy the extra. Swiss chard is a pretty smooth green which mixes well with the banana. The young fresh Thai coconut ice cubes give it a really fresh flavor that you don’t want to leave out. The pineapple seemed to be a bit like filler. But it was good RIPE filler.

This will be a great recipe to revisit come mid winter. I’m not looking forward to buying greens again, but, doesn’t look like I’ll have much of a choice before too long.

Take some time to put this one together, you won’t be disappointed.

Enjoy!

Same fruit, different greens – smoothie

There are times when you know that a different type of green would just mix better with a particular type of fruit, but that opportunity to actually give it a try doesn’t come along very offend. Yet, for me, this last week I was blessed with 5 lbs of amazingly great black grapes, a ripe pineapple and 10 fresh young Thai coconuts! That’s right, 10.

What an amazing deal on coconuts. Last weekend Lori and I stopped into the local Uwajimaya and the first thing we saw was the 10 for $10 posted above the coconuts. Knowing that I wanted to make cacao pudding and smoothies (using the water) I figured 10 was a good round number that we’d be able to put to work.

So, what was Dave’s experiment? Well, it was short lived, and consisted of making the same smoothie using the following different greens: Parsley, Lettuce and Beet Greens.

Recipe:

  • ½ to ¾ cup water
  • 1 inch ripe pineapple
  • Big handful ripe black grapes
  • 6 young fresh Thai coconut water ice cubes
  • Greens of your choice.
  • 1 probiotic optional

They all looked pretty much like this:

And, because I’m an advocate for getting a full day’s worth of greens, I show this blender as being FULL.

The first time, I added Parsley. The parsley in the garden still looks beautiful. The weather has turned a little cooler so it’s pretty much stopped growing, which means it starts to turn bitter. I don’t mind, but Lori simply hates parsley – regardless if it’s bitter or sweet (more for me… lol). I figure I’ve got a week or so before my garden crop turns to mush and I LOVE parsley, thus today, bitter or not, it’s mixed in.

That full blender made a bit more than this quart. The taste was definitely ‘full’ (from the parsley) and sweet (from the grapes). To me, it’s a great combo.

Next day, Beet Greens.

The color is a little more brown form the beets, but the flavor is a lot more smooth. Drinkability wise, this smoothie was better than the parsley based one. Parsley is really strong!

Third day, lettuce.

Notice that big pile of leaves! The lettuce that I planted at the end of July is now bolting. When the plant bolts, the leaves pick up a deeper bitter flavor. Yet, I don’t want to let this bounty go to waste. And, because Lettuce is lower on the mineral charts than the other two, I figured I’d just pile it in.

The end result was the best of the three. Lori liked this one the best, yet the entire mixture is not something that stands out as being a killer-combo. Yet, it meets my goals of making greens consumable!

I wish I’d picked up some spinach or tried the same recipe with Swiss Chard, but I guess I’ll have to wait to finish this experiment another day.

No matter how you look at it, it’s all about masking the off flavors of the greens in a fruit melody that’s not too sweet. This combination of ingredients played out just fine this week so I wanted to share.

Orange Pineapple Banana and Lettuce

But this one has a twist of Honeydew melon to really round out the flavor. I can’t stress it enough, if you get a chance to make juice for the base of your smoothie, there are a few that work really well:

  • Watermelon
  • Honeydew melon
  • Orange
  • Apple + berry (whatever kind you really like)

Or, if there’s something else that stands out as easy for you, consider it. Juice makes the best base. I look forward to the start of summer every year for the first Honeydew melons to arrive. I know they are a little ‘crunchy green’ having been shipped half way around the world, but when you juice them, you get all the flavor that you can sweeten up a little if need be. It’s pure goodness!

  • 3 oranges
  • 1 banana
  • 1 inch ripe pineapple
  • 1 cup fresh Honeydew melon
  • A few small dates as a sweetener
  • 1 bowl fresh garden lettuce

I simply love the fact that my garden’s provided me with more than enough beautiful crisp green left lettuce all summer. I hope it lasts for a few more months.

Notice that I picked apart each slice of orange to see if it had seeds in it or not. If so, I removed the seed(s). There’s something about orange seeds that I really don’t like to blend. It’s up to you, but I remove them.

I’m sure this blender full made a little more than this quart. But yum.  Give it a try, I’m sure you’ll love it.

Mango Lettuce Pineapple

This is one of my favorite winter time smoothies, yet I found a cold day in the summer (and I had some left over pineapple that needed to be used) that fit the bill perfectly for this one.

Even though the ingredients might seem a little complex, I assure you that it’s one simple little bold flavored treat that you’ll be coming back for more. Maybe tomorrow if you’ve still got the same collection of ingredients!  Lol….

  • 1 mango
  • 2 bananas
  • About 1 inch ripe pineapple
  • 6 to 7 small dates
  • Bowl of lettuce
  • About 1 cup water
  • 1 little probiotic

With all this lettuce, you’ll really have to cram it into your vita-mix blender. Just make sure you place the wettest things on the bottom for once the water gets spinning it tends to suck in the greens.

As you can see, I was definitely hungry this day! Or, I can’t remember, maybe I had company. People are starting to figure out that if they spend the night, they’ll get a green smoothie of some sort for breakfast. And, as luck would have it, I haven’t gotten any real complaints (except form a child that doesn’t eat anything but white bread and hotdogs).