Showing posts with label green smoothie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green smoothie. Show all posts
Posted by
Deanna Lack
comments (1)
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| Pretty? Eh, kinda. Good? Yes!! |
I'm trying to ease up on the coffee, because I'm tired of having a headache by 1:00 pm if I don't drink it. So I cut back to 1 cup for a few days, now I'm drinking 1 cup of Chai tea in the morning.
Chai and my empty stomach didn't get along this morning, and I was getting a burning in the back of my throat and some reflux. Bleh.
So here's what I did for my green smoothie this morning... I took a handful of stomach-soothing herbs -- apple mint, and lemon balm -- and threw them in the blender with the greens, and made sure to use papaya as one of my fruits, because it's known for its stomach-soothing properties, too. Seems to have done the trick :) Here's the recipe.
Don't have lemon balm and mint? My god, why not? Find a corner of your property you don't want to mow anymore, stick one of them at one end and the other at the other end (seed, plants, whatever) and let them go to town. They will take over the area, and you will have all the mint and lemon balm you could ever wish for. They both make amazing hot teas and iced teas, and they add flavor and a load of nutrients to a green smoothie, and as far as green things go they taste fantastic. Last year I couldn't possibly have picked and dried and used all the lemon balm and mint I had growing. My plan this year is to pick it and freeze it with water in ice cube trays so I can throw it in my smoothies all winter long.
Stomach Soother Green Smoothie
10-20 mint leaves
10-20 lemon balm leaves
1 cup kale or spinach or green of choice
1 cup water
1 cup Silk coconut milk (I love this stuff!!!!)
Blend the heck out of it. If your herbs are stemmy you might want to strip leaves off the stems. If the stems are still tender and you have a good blender, throw 'em in.
1 cup pineapple, fresh preferable or if using cans you can use some of the juice instead of water
1/2 a papaya, seeded, peeled and sorta chopped
1 small-medium banana
ice cubes to taste... I like mine cold. You can seed and chop the papaya and then freeze, freeze the banana, pineapple, or all of it, for a nice cold one. If you put enough ice cubes in here and you have a Vitamix, you can turn this into their version of soft serve ice cream. Or freeze it into popsicles for little upset tummies.
Blend till smooth. This will serve 2, you can put it in a sealing glass jar or mason jar in the fridge and it'll keep for a day or two, if there's only one of you in the household braving the green stuff.
This is GOOD! Seriously, if you don't have mint and you're a smoothie-holic, get some.
Posted by
Deanna Lack
comments (0)
Last week I started a Green Smoothie Challenge. I am loving it!! Want to join me?
Here's the deal. I am all about some whole foods, which is why we are in a CSA again this year. Well, with a full share and only 2 of us consuming it, I am finding that I have a lot of leftovers, most of which can be canned, frozen or preserved in some way, but not so much the greens, which, being springtime/early summer, we are getting a lot of.
Here's the deal. I am all about some whole foods, which is why we are in a CSA again this year. Well, with a full share and only 2 of us consuming it, I am finding that I have a lot of leftovers, most of which can be canned, frozen or preserved in some way, but not so much the greens, which, being springtime/early summer, we are getting a lot of.
So, what to do with them? I stumbled on this green smoothie thing. The concept is, you drink 1 smoothie a day. You can use it to replace a meal (you'll probably want to, they're filling, but you can snack a little too). That's it. You don't deprive yourself, you can eat what you're eating, but here's the thing. Since this is basically whole foods thrown in a blender, you're getting all the fiber with whatever sugar is in it, which for me is killing my carb/sugar cravings (yay!), and because of the fiber you don't get the same spike in blood sugar levels that you would just eating junk or even juice. The ingredients are PACKED with nutrients, so that's awesome.
How to: The skinny is, you shoot for a proportion of 40% greens (leafy dark greens preferably - think kale, spinach, collards, mustard, turnip... I don't eat most of that crap except for the first two either, but I promise, you won't taste it) and 60% whole fruit, with a liquid - water, coconut milk, almond milk, you can even use teas sometimes, or regular milk, or yogurt. You can follow that challenge link above to get you started with great tips and recipes.
Recipes will follow here, or you can follow my Green Smoothie Board on Pinterest as I gather smoothie info and recipes from all over the web. Drink up!
Posted by
Deanna Lack
comments (0)
My hubby and I were in Franklin (a Nashville suburb) last week and I had the long-awaited opportunity to go to Franklin Farmers' Market. It is awesome!!
While I was there I ran into some very cool people from Colvin Family Farms, who sold me these white cukes. Some of them (the lower one in the picture) were "regular" white cucumbers but some were these super cool translucent glowy looking things that remind me of jellyfish and were delicious (actually they were all delicious). Unfortunately they can't tell me the variety, they say they only have one variety of cukes. So I'm not sure what causes this awesome but I love it.
I have an interesting story to tell. My doctor diagnosed me with Tension Myositis Syndrome... this syndrome is the result of repressed emotions causing actual physical symptoms in the body. Lots of cases of degenerative disc disease, fibromyalgia, and other things, are the result of TMS and not necessarily a physical process. The disease keeps people living in fear of pain. And I've had both chronic neck pain and fibro type symptoms, and they are getting better with treatment.
But, when we went to Nashville this weekend, my foot suddenly started hurting, just an ache I thought was arthritis at first, but after we walked for hours at Cheekwood Botanical Garden, I started to worry that it was a stress fracture or something... any pressure on ONE point on the ball of my foot caused excruciating pain. I hobbled around all weekend.
Then on Monday I started to wonder if maybe this wasn't a new TMS manifestation... once you "conquer" one of them, others frequently crop up. So I basically told myself I didn't believe there was anything wrong and started walking on it normally, even though it HURT at first.
Within a few hours the pain was gone. The mind is a crazy thing. If you have chronic pain you owe it to yourself to read up on TMS, because there is a CURE. Here's a LINK for you.
So, we are CSA customers at Miracle Mountain Farm here in Cookeville, and we are getting more produce than I know what to do with (huge head of cabbage... oh my....). I frequently have way more greens than my husband and I can consume, so I decided to take the 30 day Green Smoothie Challenge. I have so much produce, I figured, why not? And if it makes me feel great... well, great!
Follow me on Pinterest if you want to scope out some green smoothie recipes, in addition to my usual repertoire of recipes both healthy and not so much, and also jewelry, horses, animals, and art, and lots of other eye candy because I freaking love Pinterest. I'll be sharing recipes and ideas here too... also, I'll be posting some stuff here about what to do with all that zucchini, blackberries, and other goodies that nature is pouring down upon us right now.
Follow me on Pinterest if you want to scope out some green smoothie recipes, in addition to my usual repertoire of recipes both healthy and not so much, and also jewelry, horses, animals, and art, and lots of other eye candy because I freaking love Pinterest. I'll be sharing recipes and ideas here too... also, I'll be posting some stuff here about what to do with all that zucchini, blackberries, and other goodies that nature is pouring down upon us right now.
Green Smoothie, Day One
Around two cups of mixed greens: kale, beet greens, & collard greens (I think they're collard, not 100%... we're in a CSA and I don't always know what I have!), gently packed.
3 cups of a mixture of: 2 bananas, frozen fresh strawberries, 2 small peaches
I added a teaspoon of chia seeds
2 tablespoons of frozen 100% apple juice concentrate
2 cups of water.
Go Vitamix go!
Assessment: I'm getting a little bit of aftertaste of greens (probably the beet greens and collards), but all in all I think I can handle this, it's pretty yummy. Not really pretty, because the red strawberries + greens makes it kinda brown, but good. With no added sucrose, so yay! I think it's gonna fill me up just fine, too, but we'll see.
This made way more than I can drink. I put it in the fridge in a mason jar to keep it from oxidizing; should keep till at least tomorrow.
If you're doing the green smoothie thing I'd love to hear from you and trade a few recipes.
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