Spinach – Page 3 – Genuine Observations

Sweat Spinach Peach Smoothie

March 24, 2011March 23, 2011 by Dave

If you’re looking for something super palatable, this is your smoothie. Peaches, coconut milk and baby spinach make for a dynamite combination. All the flavors are simple and smooth, so there is nothing that stands out as odd. If you’re tired of all those super smoothies with the strong flavors that you have to mask, this is worth a try.

You’ll most likely also notice that I’ve added a couple ingredients that are outside the norm; ground flax seed and ORMUS. The ground flax seed gives the smoothie a ‘breakfast’ feel – a taste of grain, but not too much. If you let the smoothie sit, you might want to pass on the flax seed for it will thicken up like pudding! ORMUS, on the other hand, adds a bit of saltiness that really makes the flavors pop! Also doesn’t hurt to add angstrom size particles into the diet.

Recipe

4 frozen peaches (I store 8 per quart size bag, so ½ bag)
1 – 1 ½ cups grapes
3 small dates
1 cup coconut milk
½ lb baby Spinach
1 Tablespoon flax seed ground
1 serving ORMUS minerals
1 probiotic

Add liquid first, followed by grapes, dates and frozen spinach. Blend to get the initial grind down. One thing that will help is if you split the frozen peaches into ice cube size pieces.

If they are much larger, you’ve really got to work the mixture in order to keep it from jamming up. Even in my case with my Vita-mix, I’d have to plunger it if the pieces are too big.

When it’s broken down a bit, add the spinach.

I’ve been tempted to stop at this point in order to enjoy the peach sorbet! It’s just as amazing without the greens as it is with them! Notice that after stuffing in ½ pound spinach it’s ready to blend and plunge. Close everything back up and mix on high under creamy.

Meanwhile, get out the coffee grinder and place the flax seed in it for grinding. Grind until it starts to stand, but not before it starts to heat up and melt. You want to keep the olds cool.

Finally, turn the blender off and add the ground flax seed, probiotic and ORUMS. You want to turn the blender on to mix in the dry ingredients, but not too long for you don’t want to break down the probiotic critters.

In the end, you’ve got breakfast and sometimes lunch. It just depends on how hungry you think you are in one sitting. With this smoothie, I really don’t mind having it for both breakfast and lunch. Thus making a little extra foots the bill for me.

I’m so glad I put up peaches last summer! I’ve been craving early summer fruit, but nothings out yet. I think this one will tide me over.

Apricot Banana Smoothie with Spinach

July 20, 2010September 20, 2010 by Dave

Don’t let anyone tell you that all smoothies are created equal. It’s just not true. Some are really bad!

In my opinion, this one falters from the use of sub-prime apricots. Using ripe fruit is really important and, well, this time I guess I didn’t pick up ripe apricots. And I didn’t pick just a few, I picked nearly 40 lbs! I bought them over the phone for 25 bucks and, as it turns out, you get what you pay for.

In an effort to try to make them worthy for consumption, I let them age a little while. You know, how you might let a pineapple age or a banana age. Sometimes it works, other times the fruit is just too green and it doesn’t ripen much at all.

Armed with pounds of apricots, I went searching on the web to see if I could find the best apricot smoothie recipe around. I poked around a little and came across the Incredible Smoothies website. Looking a little deeper, I found a page that outlined their apricot smoothies. I thought to myself – ok, this looks as good as anything I’ve found, I’ll give it a go.

Aiming to make the Apricot-Banana smoothie this is what I mixed together:

IMG_7877_ingredients — Apricots, Spinach, Banana, Dates and water

I’ve got to say it all looks good.

1 cup water
8 little Aricots
2 Bananas
7-8 Deglet Noor Dates
A bunch of fresh garden Spinach
And a probiotic for good measure (optional)

After slicing the apricots in half and tearing out the seeds (wasn’t easy for the fruit was still pretty green), I stacked it all up on the blender and gave it a spin for 60-70 seconds and ended up with this.

IMG_7880_finished — Green - as in green apple tart!

Have to tell you it looks great! Smooth and creamy, light and fragrant – but tart as H….eck. Dang, don’t like to swear much, but this one made me pucker up.

I think I’ve found a new fruit to avoid. I absolutely love raw peaches, but I have a hard time finding plums and apricots that have been picked anywhere near ripe. In a way, I wish I had a couple trees growing out back so I could pick my own 20 lbs – when they turned sweet and juicy. I guess I’ll just have to wait until we’re clearly into peach season or for when the pears come around.

But for now, avoid green apricots at any cost. Save your money for something a little sweeter!

Strawberry Kiwi – the tart tango!

June 30, 2010September 20, 2010 by Dave

If you like ‘em tart, this is a great combo! It’s kind of like green apples in a way, it’s got a kick to it. It’s something that should be tried, but it’s not something that you’d want to consume every day. Yet, I bet things would be different if I had a kiwi vine of my own and harvested vine ripe fruit and then combined it with sun ripened strawberries from the garden. I’ll bet it would be a completely different experience.

The beauty of this one can’t be matched.

What to mix up:

Couple cups strawberries
Three pealed kiwi
4-8 little dates (more the better)
½ lb fresh young baby spinach
¾ cup coconut milk (vanilla flavored)
1 little probiotic for good measure.

I love the color contrast between the kiwi and the strawberries. I couldn’t bring myself to add the banana to this one.

Note that I really had to pack that spinach in! It’s also fun watching this one mix. It starts out green and quickly turns pink from the strawberries. Then, as you press the spinach down into the blades it starts to pick up the signature green that we’ve all come to love:

Spinach is wonderful. I wish it were a little cheaper.

See ya next time.

Mango Banana Smoothie

June 20, 2010September 20, 2010 by Dave

I’ve got to admit that I’m taking a liking to mangos. Up until recently, you couldn’t get me to take a bite let alone a sniff of one. Friends raved about them, talking them up more than I could stomach. Yet, something’s changed. For some reason, I’m finding myself actually liking mangos. But not on their own. Not like eating an Apple or Orange. A mango, to me, still needs to be combined with something.

As it turns out, that little mango combines really well with greens! In this case, spinach.

So, I know you’ve heard me say that ‘this is the best smoothie ever’ before, but, it really holds for this little concoction. If you love creamy smoothies, this one just about tops the charts!

IMG_7784_ingredients — bananas, spinach, coconut milk, dates and mango

As you can see in the picture, the ingredient list is pretty small.

2 bananas
1 mango
7 – 8 small dates
1 ½ cup coconut milk
½ lb Spinach.

Unlike a number of other smoothies, this one needs the extra sweetness so it melts in your mouth like a liquid candy bar. These little dates I picked up at Top Foods for $4.50 a lb. I always buy a few pounds at a time, I just turn the plastic bag inside out over my hands and then scope out as many as my hands can hold. At this price, you can add them to just about anything.

Oh, and there are techniques to pitting a mango. I don’t remember (right now) where I learned how to pit one, but it’s pretty easy. I get out a cutting board and peal the outside with an apple peeler. Then, I stand the fruit up so that I can get the two haves cleanly separated. Lastly, I trim the extra ‘meat’ so as to leave the seed fairly clean.

But don’t take my words for it. Try Kopkitty! I love this little video. It almost makes you want to give her a hug!

Can

I think I’ll watch that one again. I love her laugh at 6.26 into the video. What a sweet mess.

In any case, just get as much of the fruit as you can in the smoothie rather than on your hands.

Take a look at the final results.

Notice how it’s standing at the top of the jar and that the air bubbles are trapped by how thick it is. Yum. If you’ve never made a smoothie, don’t start with this one for you’ll never find a liking for any of the other ones!

As always, have a great day.

Strawberry, Grape, Spinach Smoothie

June 2, 2010September 20, 2010 by Dave

I’ll bet you never thought about that combination. Just so happened that I got to shop at Costco this last weekend and wouldn’t you know it, but they had Strawberries, Grapes and Spinach all at great prices. I think the 1 lb. spinach containers are the best price in town, but I don’t think they move as many as Whole Foods for I always have to carefully pick through the Costco spinach to pick out the bad pieces and I don’t have to do this with the Whole Food packages. Is it older? Or, does Whole Foods just care for it better? I don’t know. I guess you get what you pay for.

The best part about this smoothie is that tartness of the grapes add to the essence of strawberries which give a richness to the creamy spinach based blend that ultimately stands out from many of the other green smoothies that I’ve made. This one, I do have to say, is worth trying.

Happened to have the camera with me this morning when I threw this one together.