Green Goodness

Extra Added Attractions to your Green Smoothie Experience

JOIN OUR 3 DAY – “GREEN-IN” EASY BREEZY CHALLENGE – WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 3- FRIDAY OCTOBER 5TH 2012.  MORE INFO AT OUR FACEBOOK PAGE

By now many of you will have experienced your first Green Smoothie.  We’ve been having a nice conversation on the Facebook Fan Page, with participants posting their recipes, questions, feedback and concerns.  I am more than willing to respond to all queries and to guide your journey so feel free to check in there.

In the years that I have been teaching raw foods, raw fusion, green smoothie prep and coaching people in their quest for better health and lifestyle choices, a trend I often see is the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to making a Green Smoothie.  While I love experimentation, I feel that sometimes “Less is More” when it comes to these wonderfully nutritious-packed drinks.

The “mistake” I see most often is adding ingredients that don’t need to be there, specifically protein powders, nut milks, tree nuts and yogurt.  The beauty of the Green Smoothie is that it is an infusion of pure whole foods, blended to make them easily accessible to your bloodstream and cells.  The more concentrated foods you add to the mix (essentially anything that is NOT a leafy green, vegetable or a fruit is a concentrated food) the harder it is for your body to process.  You may be defeating the purpose by adding those ingredients, but ultimately the choice is always yours!

If you are concerned about getting enough protein — you needn’t be as leafy greens are EXCELLENT sources of easily digestible protein.  Most fruits and vegetables have SOME protein and you’d be surprised to know that your regular diet might include more protein than you need.

Avoiding Boredom

If you are limiting your food intake for the week to green smoothies and want to “spice them up” there are ingredients that you can safely add to your green smoothies, although my personal recommendation is to make the first one of the day as pristine as possible — simply leafy greens, veggies and/or fruits, water and ice.

As you go through the day — and if you are fasting/feasting on Green Smoothies, here is a list of items that you may add to make them more interesting.  You don’t NEED  these items to make them any more nutritious, but they will add some texture and flavor variety:

Extras, Extras:

Coconut oil, ground flaxseed, chia seeds or chia gel, hempseeds, nutritional yeast, braggs liquid aminos, horseradish, almond butter, cacao or cocoa powder, olive or grapeseed oil, natural flavorings, apple cider vinegar, umebyoshi vinegar,  fresh chopped herbs, Superfoods powders like maca, mesquite, lucuma, spirulina or other algae, seaweeds like dulse, wakame or hijiki, carob powder, unsweetened shredded coconut, coconut water, splash of coconut or almond milk, vegan worcestshire sauce, hot sauce, bee pollen

For Sweeteners:  Stevia, xylitol (birch-derived), honey, coconut nectar, maple syrup (organic), dates, palm sugar

Sometimes when you are fasting, what you long for is a bit of texture – you can either blend less to have more crunch, or chop up some of the following fruits and vegetables and add after blending:  frozen seedless grapes, cucumber, baby carrots, red pepper, jicama,  jalapeno, organic corn kernels (but just a few as this is very starchy and changes the dynamic)

Play around with them, experiment and if you find something wonderful that works, please share it with us on Facebook.  

A couple of new recipes I created yesterday:

Savory Salad Smoothie:

Ingredients:
Handful of spinach
3 Kale leaves (ribs removed)
Handful of grape tomatoes
2 carrots
1 stalk celery
1 radish
1 bell pepper
1/2 cucumber
1 chunk of a Vidalia onion
1 clove garlic
3 sprigs of dill
1 TB. extra virgin olive oil

Option:  this might taste better with a little sea salt.  You can replace the olive oil with one half ripe avocado

Blend with ice and water and leave slightly chunky.  Heavenly!

Dessert Smoothie

Ingredients:
2-3 cups chopped watermelon
1 bunch of fresh mint
splash of orange juice (I actually put in a splash of Trilogy flavored Kombucha)

Blend well and enjoy!