What's in that????

Green Power Morning Drinks

When I go to work in the mornings I take a quart of green smoothie with me.  That's 6 mornings a week, folks.  It never fails that someone asks in a very interested (and sometimes skeptical) voice, "What's in that?".  I patiently explain the virtuous list of wonderful ingredients but it is long and varied day to day so I never expect anyone to remember.  

In addition to the daily green smoothie I try to juice fresh vegetables and fruit as often as possible.  I am currently working my summer schedule which is a blissful and simply lean schedule of work hours.  This gives me plenty of time to read about food, play with food, cook food, and dream about food.  It also gives me time to pick the vegetables in my garden, wash them, juice them, and then clean up afterward.  

This morning we had fresh green juice made up of the following items:

Kale fresh from the garden

Celery fresh from the garden

Parsley fresh from the garden

Cucumber fresh from the garden (that was exciting since the mice ate all my cucs last summer!)

and carrots, apple, ginger and lemon from the grocery

There is just about nothing that beats walking into your garden and picking stuff you grew!  It is fresh and delicious, you know where it comes from, it is still warm from the day, you know that the compost in the ground came from the last year's worth of food scraps you put in the bin....  it is truly fulfilling.

Here is the juice we drank (and no, I don't usually drink it out of a tall wine glass... it just looked really good in that container so I photographed it that way)

Why juice?  Some would say, "but it's void of the fiber that eating your fruit and vegetables provides."  I totally agree.  However, some of my favorite food heroes agree with me on this point... we just can't get enough green into our systems.  I eat tons of vegetables every day - green smoothies, salad, stir fry, steamed veggies, veggies in my tacos, veggies in my tofu scramble, veggies in my hummus, veggies by the handful and plateful. Juice is an amazing concentrated way to get more green. When I juice, I just feel better.  Period.

On to the green smoothie.....

Now here is the real "hero" of green.  This is the whole package, folks.  This is the whole "enchilada" - all the fiber and everything.  This is where I get cups and cups of greens, more grams of fiber than most Americans eat in a week, lots of omega 3's, plenty of protein, and tons of phytonutrients!  My husband and I each drink a quart of green smoothie almost everyday.

Look at that chard plant from my garden.  That's where most of the green came from in today's smoothie.  I suggest different greens everyday - chard, kale, dark green lettuce, parsley, dandelion greens, beet greens, fresh sprouts, and a myriad of other exotic and exciting green choices. If you live in Santa Cruz please visit the "Three Sisters" booth at the local Wednesday and Saturday Farmer's markets to be introduced to an amazing array of greens - it's the little stand with all the smaller baskets of beautiful greens. I buy my sorrel and amaranth greens there every week for green soup... but I digress.

Today's Green Superfood smoothie recipe is as follows:

 - 4 cups water

 - handful of cashews (you can use any kind of nut if you have a high powered blender      use nut butters if your blender doesn't have a vitmamix kind of engine)

 - 2 tablespoon chia

 - 2 tablespoon ground flax seed

 - 1 tablespoon maca root powder

 - 1 teaspoon acai powder

 - 1 teaspoon lucuma powder

 - 2 tablespoons Vitamineral Green

 - 5 huge chard leaves

 - 5 large kale leaves

 - handful of parsley

 - 1/2 cup watermelon

 - cup strawberries

 - 1 ripe banana

 - handful of organic red grapes 

 - slice of raw ginger

Blend until smooth and beautiful.  I drink this all morning long.  This can easily feed 3 or 4 people.  

Why maca, acai, lucuma, chia, flax, and vitamineral green?

I've become interested in what is now being called "super foods".  I know that my family eats super food everyday because most of the time I make it and I know what is in it.  We eat tons of vegetables, fruit, beans, grains,  fermented food like sauerkraut, and good fats like avocado and olives.   Those are super foods - nature made 'em and we consume them.  However, there are a whole class of foods that are now readily available in local health food stores which can add to our already rich and nutritious diets.

I recently bought and read a cookbook called "Superfood Kitchen" by Julie Morris.  I decided that it would be great to add some of these things to our smoothies.

Maca Powder

Maca is indigenous to the highlands of the Peruvian Andes where is has been used medicinally for thousands of years.  Maca is one of a rare class of plants called "adaptogens".  An "adaptogen", when consumed, can actually "adapt" and adjust to combat the different types of stresses that are put on the body.  Maca is supposed to strengthen and balance the body's systems.  It provides long lasting energy and combats fatigue without being a stimulant.  It contains 60 phytonutrients - that's reason enough to add it to a smoothie if you ask me.

Acai

Acai is a berry that grows in the Amazon.  It has been used for thousands of years both as a food source and medicinally. This small Amazonian berry is one of nature's most concentrated forms of antioxidants - twice that of blueberries (and those are pretty bomber in terms of antioxidants!).  Acai contains a broad range of vitamins and minerals as well as healthy mono and polyunsaturated fats.

Lucuma

Lucuma powder is a finely milled powder made from freeze-dried lucuma fruit, which is native to South America.  It has a full bodied maple taste but is very low in sugar.  It basically sweetens and is full of beta-carotene, niacin, and iron.

Chia Seed

Chia was once a staple food source among the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans.  It was used to increase strength and maintain stamina during long distance journeys.  Chia is an amazing plant based source of omega 3 fatty acids.  Chia is full of antioxidants , is an easily digestible source of protein, and a great source of fiber.  1 tablespoon of chia provides over 1/4 of our daily requirements for fiber (unless you believe, as I do, that we need much more fiber on a daily basis than governmental "requirements").

Chia contains a high content of mucilage which means the chia absorbs water really well and forms a kind of "gel" layer around each seed.  A chia seed can absorb about nine times its weight in water.  It expands in the stomach and creates a sense of fullness.

Flax Seed

Flax seed is a small seed that originated in Mesopotamia and has been used since the stone age.  Much like chia, it is known for its beneficial essential fatty acid profile.  Flax doesn't have quite the same antioxidant profile as chia but it is well known for its lignans.  Lignans are a class of phytonutrients known to help balance hormone levels.  Flax is full of protein and is very high in fiber.  Much like chia, flax has the same mucilage ability.

Vitamineral Green

This is a Health Force Super Foods product.  I use it because it is full of green from the earth and water - grasses from the ground and grasses from the sea.  It also has a probiotic element and an enzyme concentrate. 

Nettle, alfalfa, dandelion, barley green, oat grass, chickweed, spirulina, chlorella, kelp, dulse, nori, wheat grass, american basil, parsley leaf, and on and on.  These things help to alkalize the body (think anti- inflammatory)

This is a product that I think is well worth the money.  Staff of Life often has it on sale and that's the very best time to buy it!

Stay Green everyone!