It’s been a while since I posted a smoothie recipe, so it looks like today is a great day to share with the world a cherry concoction with one of my favorite base ingredients – Honeydew melon! If there’s one thing that I’ve learned that makes a smoothie really stand out, it’s the liquid base that you use. To me, water just doesn’t cut it.
I know all the purists state that the green smoothie that you make should be as simple as possible. But if it doesn’t taste fantastic, where are you going to find the motivation to keep making them? I mean, really think about it. If you’re going out of your way to make something that’s generally not cheap, wouldn’t you really want to make it enjoyable?
Well, this one is!
About 1 ½ cups fresh pitted cherries
1 banana
1 ½ cups fresh honeydew melon juice
4 little dates
About a heaping spoon full raw cacao
Small amount Vanilla powder (just part of a teaspoon)
One bowl garden fresh Swiss chard
For this year, this recipe is being posted after cherry season has come and gone, but if you were lucky enough to store some away, you’ll still be able to make it while the Honeydew melon are plentiful. Swiss chard can still be found in stores (as it can year round) so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Take note that this quantity will fill the blender!
This one always turns out brown from the mixture of green and red. And, if you look close, you’ll be able to see that I didn’t run this one as long as I normally do – there are little pieces of cherry still visible. Yum. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve had the opportunity to share on the blog here. The road has taken many-a-turns, but I’ve barely been able to sit down and relax for a couple weeks now. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Fortunately, I’ve been able to shrug off the stress. Could it be that the green smoothies are helping? Maybe it’s the fresh garden greens. But in any case, as long as I’m still feeling good, it doesn’t matter what’s the source of the goodness really is. Sometimes I like to think that it’s the time spent weeding and watering the garden. Other times, it’s just breathing the fresh air on the back deck while listening to the birds singing in the trees.
Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder if it’s the anandamide in the cacao that I’ve added to this smoothie!
Melon juice makes this one!
So here we go.
Almost 2 cups Honeydew melon juice
About 2 cups pitted cherries
One banana
Four little dates
A spoon full cacao
About ¼ teaspoon vanilla powder
Bunch of garden fresh Swiss chard
Add everything into the blender starting with the wettest stuff first.
Looks like half fruit
Keep the speed fairly low until you get the mixture to start turning. After that, flip it on hit and count to about 60.
The creamy result
The end result is amazingly creamy with a full cherry BANG! It’s like a cherry tootsie pop. The Honey drew draws out the favor of the fresh cherries to really make them stand out.
This recipe is a total keeper for me. It’s too bad that I don’t have a larger store of cherries, for I’d be making this one way more often. Yet, then again, if I simply made this one over and over again, I’d miss out on all the other great fruit that comes out midsummer!
Planted some more lettuce, spinach and beets with the intention of making those my late fall smoothie greens. Hope they come up in this heat.
I know, I know, I didn’t learn the lesson from the first couple apricot smoothies and here I go again – making an apricot smoothie. So, I’ve got twenty lbs of these puppies and I’m trying to figure out a way that may make them taste a bit better.
So this time I added more dates and tried mango. In picture form, it looked like this:
Apricots, Swiss chard, Mango, Deglet Noor dates and water
Notice:
8 of the ripest apricots I could find in the box
Some amazing garden fresh Swiss Chard! Wow!
1 Honey mango,
8 or 9 or so Deglet Noor Dates
1 ½ cup water
1 little probiotic (optional)
It looks great stacked in the blender.
This looks nice stacked up and ready to go!
But the part that I really wanted to show with this posting is how I peal mangos. If you remember back a few postings, I linked in a YouTube video on how to peal a mango (view my article here). The woman in the video cut and sliced her way into a real mess. I don’t see it as that bad – even with a really ripe mango!
So here is the picture sequence.
Tools - nice sserrated knife and apple peelerpeel the mango
Stand on edge and cut down just off center.Cut just off center on second side. Notice how thin the seed is!Now lay the seed down flat and use the back side of the knife to scrap that last bits off the seed.
All it really takes is an apple peeler, a serrated knife and the ability to hold a ‘wet bar of soap’. The hardest part is lining up to cup along the seed. They are so flat that it shapes the fruit, so if you inspect it before cutting, you’ll slice right along the seed almost every time.
In the end, because I spent time picking out the ripest apricots from the collection, I ended up with something that was palatable.
But I still recommend avoiding apricots of you can help it. There are a ton of other choices that make it to market ripe.
I think I’m really starting to like Swiss Chard! Especially when it’s used to color this smoothie green. The combination of all the ingredients seem to come together with just the right texture to make this one stand out.
I know, I know, you’ve heard that from me before, but this time I’ve gotten feedback from a couple other people that have tried this one and, most of the time they kind of shrug their acceptance, yet this time they perk up with a – wow! That’s good!
For three days now I’ve made the exact same smoothie and its better each time. I love it when I can find enough ingredients to make good smoothies for multiple days.
Swiss Chard, Coconut milk, probiotic, banana, mangos, dates and Pineapple
Here’s what I used
If you remember from the Masking the bitters out of a lettuce smoothie article, I’m using a slice of pineapple that really adds to the tropical flavor. The mangos where also a great deal at Wholefoods. They were ripe but not overripe.
Ingredients:
2 mangos
1 banana
Slice of pineapple (about 1 inch thick)
Four or five little dates (got a great deal on these little dates)
1 – 1 ½ cups Vanilla flavored Coconut milk
1 probiotic
And, of course, 1 bunch Swiss Chard.
When I bought the Swiss Chard at WholeFoods, I commented to the woman at the checkout that this was the dirtiest Swiss Chard I’d ever seen (been raining for what seems like forever) and she responded “we won’t charge more for the extra earth.” Ha. What a great spin on things. So, wash the Swiss Chard well.
Ok, build from the liquid up. Add Coconut milk, Mango, banana, pineapple, dates, probiotic and then pile in the Swiss chard. Looks pretty cool all stacked in the blender.
All stacked up
Start off at lower speeds because you’re going to have to use the ‘plunger’ on this one.
Starting the blend
I love how the colors separate during the grinding process. After you hear the dates and greens grind up, flip it on high and start counting. Because the mango and banana is going to give this some texture, you want to make sure to not spin it too long. It will quickly heat up.
In the end, this is what it looks like.
Finished product
I highly recommend giving this one a try. That is, if you’ve got a good deal on mangos and pineapple when Swiss chard is in season.
Can I get away with saying that on such a formal blog? I don’t know why I’ve waited so long to start blending Chard. I’ve looked at it for months right next to the Kale and Collard Greens. And I think I’ve been associating Chard and Collard Greens. The last batch of Collard Greens that I munched on had a clear peppery spicy flavor that didn’t seem to mix with anything. I couldn’t see it working in a sweeter smoothie.
Well, I felt bold the other day when I saw the Chard on sale for half price. The best part about it was that they weren’t regular bunches split in two being sold half price! That’s a dirty trick that I’ve seen played out on the stores that I know people fall for. Rather, it was the normal size, larger than life beautiful green leaves and firm and fresh.
In any case, I Googled up a site that has some simple descriptions of the taste. Their words really do some up these two greens:
Collard Greens have a mild flavor and are rich in vitamins A, C and K, folate, fiber, and calcium. The best way to prepare them is to boil them briefly and then add to a soup or stir-fry. You can also eat collard greens as a side dish. Just add your favorite seasoning and enjoy!
And
Swiss Chard tastes similar to spinach and is rich in vitamins A, C, and K, potassium and iron. It is best stir-fried or eaten raw in salads.
I love spinach and was plenty surprised how similar the taste of chard is to spinach.
I also love strawberries but it’s so hard to find strawberries that are actually ripe!
When I was a teenager, I worked on a U-pick strawberry farm. Everyday throughout the season, I had access to the best sun ripened berries in the Puget Sound area. If I saw a beautiful berry beckoning to be eaten, I’d always check the crown to see if it was completely red. Ripe berries don’t have any white across the top.
Turns out that the berries that end up on the stores sold as ‘fresh’ berries are usually picked green.
Yet to fully ripen strawberry
Notice, in the picture, the white core to the strawberry, you won’t see this on a really ripe berry. As it turns out, frozen strawberries are usually closer to being ripe then what you usually find fresh. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture on hand to show a frozen berry (even though I’ve got a page in the freezer).
What this picture doesn’t show is the mouth watering smell. I have to admit that the growers have perfected capturing the smell of a strawberry early in the berries development so that when you pick them up in the store, you automatically start to salivate. It’s too bad they don’t taste like fresh picked.
So, on to the recipe; here is the collection of ingredients in picture form:
[picture of ingredients]
Clockwise left to right: Strawberries, Green Chard, Coconut Milk with added vanilla, lucuma powder, a probiotic complex, and pitted dates.
Weights and Measures:
1 bundle Chard
1 cup Coconut milk
12 oz Fresh Strawberries
3 Pitted Dates
1 tablespoon Lucuma powder
1 little probiotic complex (optional and of your choice)
Add the coconut milk to the blender first followed by the fruit and greens.
Everything stacked in the blender
After it’s been ground good and smooth, add the lucuma if it’s not sweet enough. It might be just fine without adding anything more. The funniest part is when you first turn on the blender and you get the wonderful strawberry pink smoothie that, as soon as the greens start to cut, turns a creamy lighter green that you can see with the resulting smoothie picture shown at the top.
If I’d known that Chard was as good (or better) than spinach when I first started making green smoothies, I’d probably just be discovering spinach now!
Let me know if you give this a try. I’d recommend it to anyone, that’s why I’m posting it here.
