We’ve had some sick kiddies around here lately, so I’ve been doing my best to make tasty, visually appealing treats to tempt compromised appetites. One day, I made a raspberry banana smoothie with only a small handful of spinach leaves — not enough to change the color at all — and I put in a tablespoon or so of hemp seeds and ground flax to boost the nutrition. I layered it in a glass with coconut milk vanilla yogurt and topped it with buckwheat crunchies.
To ease the earache, I sliced an onion and tipped some of the juice into the offended ear. You can also add this juice to oil as well, but you want to make sure when you’re doing so that the eardrum has not burst!
Next I made up a hot sock to keep the heat on it. I found an old, unmatched sock (not a challenge around here!) and put a pan on the stove with a little less than 2 cups of rice in it, and turned it on medium heat.
Once I could feel the heat by putting my hand an inch or so above the surface of the rice, I removed the pan from the heat. It’s tough to spoon the rice into the sock, so I use the canning funnel to make pouring it a breeze.
I knotted the top of the sock tightly enough to keep it sealed, but loosely enough so I could reheat the rice as needed.
We first tried this lovely concoction at a friend’s house. Our kids, seeing their friends slurping this green concoction down greedily, gave it a try and have never looked back. This is still one of their favorites.
It’s super sweet, and the spinach is so mild you can’t taste the “green” at all, which makes this a wonderful introduction to green smoothies! I love the color of this breakfast beverage, it’s so in your face GREEN. We put berries in most of our smoothies, which, in the presence of greens, turn the smoothie something along the spectrum from mauve to brown, depending on the ratio of red to green I suppose. So I really love it when our “green smoothie” is actually green!
it’s-so-easy-being-green smoothie
1 pineapple
1 banana
couple handfuls of spinach
Tbs flax seeds, ground
Chop pineapple, break up banana, top with greens and seeds. Blend. Share with others!
I add a variety of things to our smoothies to boost the nutrition. Sometimes it’s herbal infusions, sometimes flax, chia or hemp seeds, sometimes bee pollen or spirulina, it all depends on what I have on hand and what I’m in the mood for. My kids don’t care for much pollen or spirulina, so when using those I will pour off their smoothies and blend mine a bit more to disperse the add-in of the day. I do this with the greens too sometimes, especially if I’m using green curly kale. Those leaves have a stronger flavor than baby spinach, so I’ll just include one or two for their smoothie and return the carafe to the blender base and toss in more leaves for my smoothie.
Lucia prefers to just eat her pineapple and spinach from separate bowls, so about 1/3 of the pineapple ends up in a dish for her. Sometimes she wraps the spinach around the pineapple slices, sometimes she just nibbles them separately.This smoothie can also make a great fruit dip or raw fondue if you want to get fancy. Just cut up your favorite fruits into bite-size cubes, and serve with toothpicks and a bowl of lovely green fruit dip. Or go the extra mile and wrap your small pieces of fruit in a collard or lettuce leaf, roll and dip into this as you would a spring roll. Yummers!
I’ve also noticed that you can add the pineapple core to the Vita-Mix, but I’m not sure I would try this with a regular blender. I think my old Oster would be up to the task, but I don’t know for sure. Maybe we’ll have to have a blender showdown! Any excuse for a party!
Have you ever tried a green green smoothie? Were you surprised by the taste? What was in it? Do you still make a green-colored green smoothie with no red or blue ingredients to mess with the gorgeous green? What’s your favorite? Now that our Smoothie Extravaganza is coming to a close, let us know if you tried any, what modifications you made and how you liked it! Not that we won’t post any more smoothies, but as we’re doing snacks and dehydration in class this week, well, I guess that makes this the week of the Snack Attack!
One way to boost the nutrition of your smoothies is to use an herbal infusion in place of any other liquid (water, juice, coconut water, etc). Listening to Susun Weed’s interview on the Raw Mom Summit last year, I learned how beneficial herbal infusions are, and that they are significantly more nutritious than herbal teas.
Infusions are super easy to make. Fill a quart jar (8 cups) with 1 oz. by weight (about a cup by volume) of the herb of your choice at night, fill the jar with boiling water, cover to retain the essential oils that would otherwise escape on the steam, and let it sit 4-10 hours. I usually make mine at night so it’s ready when I get up. Strain (I pour the infusion into my french press to make straining easy and mess-free), and drink 1 cup, refrigerating the remainder to avoid spoilage. It is best to drink 2-4 cups a day, so adding some to your smoothie can help accomplish this. The taste will vary depending on the herb of course.
Why herbal infusions instead of tea? Susan says, “A cup of nettle tea has 5 mg of calcium. A cup of nettle infusion contains 250 mg of calcium. Why waste my time with teas?” If you have made the infusion the night before you can heat it up and enjoy it as you would your favorite cup of tea and experience the great nutritional benefits as well.
I have only used infusions of nettle and horsetail at present, but you can find one of Susun’s book through your library, inter-library loan (ILL), or right here in our very own Bodega and see if she’s got something in there for what ails ya. What I like about the infusions is how rich in minerals and vitamins they are — they’re natural supplements! Nettles contain Calcium, chlorophyll, chromium, cobalt, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, protein, riboflavin, selenium, thiamine, zinc, vitamins A, C, E, K.
Drinking a nettle infusion will boost your energy, give you healthy hair and skin and help solve adrenal and urinary tract issues. Alternating with horsetail (Susun recommends getting to know each herb by drinking single-herb infusions, so consume different herbs at different times), which is high in calcium and silica, will increase the strength of your hair and nails.
During the summer, we collect these undervalued plants from our yard and use the leaves as the greens in our smoothie. I find that they have a less “green” taste than kale, collards and chard! And the best part is, they’re FREE and more nutrient-dense than many of the things I can buy at the grocery store.
stinging nettle hair
I recommend that you wear gloves to harvest them to avoid getting stung, but if you do get pricked by the tiny hypodermic needles full of chemicals, the plant itself offers the remedy! Take a leaf and roll it from base to tip and put it between your teeth. Macerate the leaf into a paste and apply this paste to the stung skin. Harvest before the seeds (yellowish wisps in the picture) appear, so that the full energy of the plant is in the leaves.
Frequent harvesting also helps keep them under control, as they will spread easily in lovely loose garden soil. We have permitted them to take over a corner of our garden, but keep them contained to that area by eating them regularly. They have appeared in some of the edges of our yard, but as these are younger patches, we haven’t started harvesting them yet so that they might expand a bit more first. You can cut down the tops once they do go to seed and place in parts of your yard where you wouldn’t mind having a patch. And they’re not limited to infusions or smoothies, either. Dante likes to saute them with salt, garlic and olive oil and serve them as greens for dinner, or put them into sandwiches. Cooking or blending neutralizes the sting, so you can eat them without fear.
I would like to get enough nettles outside to be able to harvest and dry my own as well, but I first bought them from health food stores like It’s Only Natural in Middletown, Foodworks II in Old Saybrook, and Garden of Light in Glastonbury. Now that I’ve been able to sample them, I order in bulk from Mountain Rose Herbs. I really appreciate MRH’s standards concerning the people, land and plants involved in the production of their products.
The infusion is cool by the morning when I’m ready to use it, so I just strain it and add enough to my smoothie to thin it as I would any other liquid. I do tend to cut back on the greens I add when using the infusion, otherwise I find the taste a bit too green for me. But since I’m getting the nutrition from the infusion, it’s all good.
Profusion Infusion
1 apple
1 banana
1 cup frozen cherries
1 handful of greens
up to 2 cups nettle infusion
Add fruit and greens to blender.
Pour nettle infusion over it.
Blend.
I forgot to snap the picture before I started the blender, but you can still see that the infusion doesn’t greatly alter the color. Nor with all that fruit, did I even notice the taste, which is pretty mild to begin with, at least for nettles and horsetail.
I didn’t add the chia seeds to the blender, but instead put them on top to have a different sort of crunch to our smoothie. Unless you want it to thicken considerably though, when you add chia to your smoothie either in the blender or on top, you should eat it fairly quickly. If you linger over your smoothie you will end up with more a pudding than a beverage. Not a bad idea, if you’re wanting something of that consistency, but a bit of a shock if you try to drink it, only to have it fall onto your face as a lump of pudding. You can read about the benefits of adding chia seeds to your diet and buy them in our bodega.
Watch Susun and her grandaughter make nettle infusion while you down your next smoothie:
It’s Smoothie Week here at crunchybits, and today we’ve got another dessert-like drink for you! When it comes to smoothies in the winter, I find that I’m not looking for light, clean smoothies as much as I do in the summer. I want something richer, warmer, decadent. And today’s smoothie fits the bill.
Apple Pie Smoothie
3 apples
1 banana
1/2 cup raisins
2 handfuls spinach
1 cup water
1 Tbs ground flax
cinnamon to taste
Core and chop apples and banana.
Add raisins, water, and 2 handfuls of spinach.
Blend and enjoy!
Once I got the smoothie to the table with a spoon, I realized that I’d left out the most important ingredient — cinnamon! So I got our shaker from the cupboard and several shakes and stirs later, YUM! It was perfectly spiced and warming, tart and sweet, green and crunchy. Thanks to our buckwheat crunchies that is. I would like to try a variation of this with a handful of walnuts some time, but I found this to be a satisfying glass o’ yum for breakfast.
The start of this smoothie (apples, raisins and cinnamon) makes a great applesauce. I like to puree 2/3 of the apples and toss the last bit in just before turning off the blender so that it’s a bit chunky, but again, I like to chew food and find pureed applesauce odd to eat. So, if you don’t want a smoothie but are looking for a quick sweet treat, give it a whirl!
Dante, always the man for a garnish, dressed it up for the camera — slice of kiwi and crunchies spelling S heart, for smoothie love.
Continuing on with our Smoothie Extravaganza, I’m posting one I made this past weekend — hence the full blender. I can’t believe this one came out so purpley. Lots of berries hidden in that blender. Can you spot them? Actually, cherries aren’t berries are they. But I’m going to ignore that and call this glass of goodness
Merry Tri-greenberry
1 apple
3/4 cup blueberries
1/2 cups strawberries
1/2 cup sweet cherries
1 banana
2 beet greens
2 romaine leaves
2 kale leaves
1/2 small container coconut water
2 Tbs hemp seeds
You know the drill. Rinse, chop and blend.
You can see that most of our smoothies are topped with crunchies. Both kids love this aspect of smoothies and we tend to use then nearly every day if we have them. They’re super easy to make and have on-hand, and keep for ages in the cupboard if dehydrated properly. I buy raw buckwheat groats (not kasha, or toasted buckwheat) and soak them for an hour or two in a bowl. The soak water gets very slimy and sometimes you see tiny bubbles form on the surface, almost like when you cook beans but not as foamy. I imagine this happening in my stomach if I ate unsoaked/sprouted buckweat… blech. After soaking, rinse really well until they no longer feel slimy. You can let them sprout for a day or so or pop them straight into the dehydrator for a couple of hours. They don’t take too long to crisp up nicely.
Before I had a dehydrator, I would spread them on clean kitchen towels in the hot summer sun, stirring them up a bit now and then to ensure even drying. I still do this during warmer months, but am glad to have the dehydrator to keep us crunching our smoothies throughout the winter. Last week I made a superyummytastic granola bar with the soaked buckwheat. I only made a bit to try it out, but they were gone in seconds. A hit with everyone in the house, and a perfect on-the-go snack.
Since we’re going to be covering smoothies in our raw food class this week, I thought I’d post another. This one is closer to what I drink most mornings when I start to get hungry. The kids love it, and since the spinach is so mild I can pack a decent number of greens in. Can you see why I choose to plant blueberries and raspberries?
Such a simple, ordinary smoothie begs an ostentatious name, n’est-ce pas? Something along the lines of those at Jera’s Juice, the smoothie shop I remember from our days living in Boston. My favorite was the Razzamatazz, which was basically frozen yogurt with some ice and raspberries in it. With 2 free “enhancers”, of course. These days, my preferred smoothies are more nutrient dense, and with the greens, darker and mauver in color. All those antioxidants and minerals give me the power to make up new words like mauver. What new word have you made up recently?
Without further ado, I give you my tribute to the ghost of smoothies past:
Bluebrazzle Dazzle (extra points if you can say that 10x fast!)
1 banana
1 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 cup frozen raspberries
1-2 Tbs chia seeds
1-2 Tbs flax seeds
several handfuls of spinach
less than 1 cup of water to thin
I tend to put the fruit cut into chunks on the bottom, then frozen fruit, then greens. All amounts are an approximation. I just pour into the blender til it looks right or the bag is empty.
Sometimes I add the seeds before the greens, sometimes I pour them in once everything has homogenized.
Once everything is in, I add enough water to nearly cover the fruit.
Blend, baby, blend.
We like to top our smoothies with buckwheat crunchies and goji berries, and eat them with a spoon.
I stopped drinking smoothies in early winter because, well, we keep our house relatively cold, and a nice frosty smoothie was often the LAST thing I wanted to drink. But I didn’t feel as well when I started eating things like sprouted toast or oatmeal and hot tea for breakfast as I have in years past. So I’m back to smoothies, and I’ve found a couple of things to alleviate the situation: I put on my hat, coat and gloves before I sit at the table. Kidding. Well, almost. I do actually wrap up in my snuggly shawl sometimes when I’m particularly feeling the cold, but that’s only til the heat kicks in. Did I mention that I crank the heat to a balmy 65 when I start to make my smoothie? Yes indeedy, it’s a veritable sweat lodge in the kitchen by the time I start to slurp my frigid beverage. I turn it right back to 60 when I’m done, however, so those of you who wear your coats at my place can continue to plan accordingly. Unless you come for smoothie time.
I don’t usually “break the fast” until I’ve been up for a while, so if I remember, I pour the frozen fruit into a bowl and let it defrost until I’m ready. This alters the texture of the smoothie slightly, but nothing horrible and the not-freezing smoothie is more appetizing for me in winter. Lucky as I am to have a Vita-Mix, I also leave it running for a little bit. You can make warm soups in a Vita-Mix if you let it run for 5-7 minutes. I’m not looking for warm berry soup, but if I run it for 2-3 minutes it does seem to take a bit of the chill off.
I am still experimenting with adding warming spices to the smoothie — ginger, cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, etc — depending on the other ingredients. The carrot cake smoothie would be an excellent winter warmer since it lends itself to inclusion of lots of those spices, and I imagine chocolate-flavored nut milk drinks would also be delicious with those types of spices. Also, those same spices are credited with having a number of health benefits: cinnamon alone is known for its antiseptic, antibacterial and antifungal properties and has been widely used as a diaphoretic (promotes sweating), parasiticide, antispasmodic, aphrodisiac (hubba hubba!), analgesic (painkilling) and diuretic. Ginger has more than 12 types of antioxidants making it useful for many health issues, is anti-inflammatory and — you guessed it — reputed to be an aphrodisiac! Love is all you need…
Botanically, carrots belong to the Umbelliferae family, which also includes fennel/anise, celery, parsnips, dill, cilantro/cumin, parsley, caraway, Queen Anne’s Lace and the poisonous hemlock. Many of the popular plants in this family works well in the garden as a companion plant. Largely because the tiny flowers forming the umbels, for which the group is named, are perfectly suited for parasitic wasps, ladybugs and predatory flies which drink their nectar. These beneficial insects will then dine upon insect pests on nearby plants. Some of the more fragrant herbs in this family possibly dilute the odors of nearby plants, or the pheromones emitted by pest insects to signal to other pests.
Raw carrots contain vitamin C, vitamin B6, thiamine, folic acid, potassium and magnesium. Carrots are one of the best sources of carotene which is a strong antioxidant and is converted by the body into Vitamin A. Also most of the goodness is actually in, or just below the skin. Many people do not realize that numerous antioxidant compounds are located in the skin of fruit and vegetables, so buy organic where you can for fruits and veggies that have edible peels and don’t peel them before using! You can get some vitamin K by using the greens on top of the carrot — the carrots themselves don’t have much of this important vitamin, so save those greens for your next green smoothie! Carrots are also known for their sweetening, antianemic, healing, diuretic, remineralizing and sedative properties.
This smoothie isn’t as simple as my usual morning fare, so I only tend to make it once or twice a year as a treat. It’s also incredibly sweet, so seldom is probably better than frequently anyway. But I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now, and bought an extra bag of carrots to satisfy my craving.
We are lucky to have gotten a juicer from Luke’s parents when our old one broke, but if I didn’t have this I would probably just make a pulpier version in the Vita-Mix. Since I do, I juice the carrots ahead of time. I was making enough for myself and the kids, and while a better juicer might yield more juice with less carrots, I nearly used the entire 5lb bag!
I poured all the carrot juice into the blender and set the pulp aside for a later use (I’ll post that later this week — Luke ate all that I made so I am dehydrating the second batch for pictures). The kids were playing Harry Potter and had a hard time settling to smoothie, so I’m here to confess that I didn’t push this sweet treat too hard and found an alternative use for the extra smoothie.
Carrot Cake Smoothie
3.5lbs carrots, juiced
2 carrots
1/2 cup walnuts
2 bananas
2-3 dates
cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, etc to taste
I juiced all the carrots, poured this into the blender.
I roughly chopped 2 carrots, added to the blender, along with the bananas, walnuts and spice. I opted for only cinnamon this time to keep it simple.
Blend til smooth. My old Oster blender never managed to get all the little walnut bits, so I had to chew that smoothie more, but this one was pure smooth goodness.
If our ice cream maker hadn’t started leaking freezy fluid, I would pour this in for a delicious and different raw ice cream. It’s incredibly rich. If making this as a smoothie, I would probably leave out the dates and perhaps one of the bananas. Did I mention that I found this to be incredibly sweet? I don’t remember thinking that at all in the summer when I made this last, so either my carrots were much sweeter or my palate and sensitivity to sweetness has changed. At any rate, it was a lovely, rich treat on a cold winter day.
I read Victoria Boutenko’s Green Smoothie Revolution last night. It’s a slim volume and a quick read. Full of inspiring recipes. She lays out the benefits of drinking a quart of green smoothie daily, addresses the need to rotate greens, experiments to compare oxidation of ingredients in smoothies and juices, and touches on serving green smoothies to pets and children. Because the greens are blended, they are broken down further than we tend to do when chewing greens in a salad, thus the nutrients are more readily assimilated.
Luke is usually gone during the week by the time I’ve been up long enough to be hungry. But on the weekends I push the limits of the Vita-Mix to make enough sweet smoothie love for everyone. I also tend to make simple smoothies — 3 or 4, maybe 5 ingredients. But I didn’t have enough of any one thing to make a usual smoothie this weekend, so I ended up scrounging in the fridge and fruit bowl and tossing in whatever I could find to bump up the volume.
Kitchen Sink Smoothie:
apple
banana
mango
frozen strawberries
frozen cherries
1 carrot
5 leaves kale
2 leaves romaine
2 Tbs chia seeds
2 Tbs ground flaxseeds
Roughly chop all fruits and carrot, add to blender. Destem kale a bit, tear kale and romaine and add to blender. Add a cup or two or water, coconut water, herbal infusion or juice and blend!
Once the mixture is blended up, add chia and flax seeds and process for a little bit more.
We love buckwheat crunchies and goji berries on top of our smoothies. I soak, rinse and dehydrate raw (not toasted) buckwheat groats which keep pretty well in a jar in the cupboard. These add a nice crunch to the smoothie. Sometimes I sprinkle some chia seeds on top if I haven’t added them directly to the smoothie. If you do add them to the smoothie, only do so if you’ll be consuming them immediately. The lovely mucilaginous properties of chia turn your smoothie into a puddingish dish that you may not have been expecting.
Tip for green smoothie joy — mix it up. Don’t make the same smoothie every day. Your body needs the variety that different mixes bring, and eating the same greens all the time allows the alkaloids present in that particular green to build up and cause trouble. It is not as important to rotate the fruit since they rarely contain alkaloids, but a greater variety will ensure a more well-rounded nutrient intake and is something you should shoot for. My green smoothies aren’t always green (using red or blue berries will ensure a lovely mauveish brown color) but they sure are sweet!
We’ve had some sick kiddies around here lately, so I’ve been doing my best to make tasty, visually appealing treats to tempt compromised appetites. One day, I made a raspberry banana smoothie with only a small handful of spinach leaves — not enough to change the color at all — and I put in a tablespoon or so of hemp seeds and ground flax to boost the nutrition. I layered it in a glass with coconut milk vanilla yogurt and topped it with buckwheat crunchies.
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