Red Smoothie

I wanted to share a new recipe for a red smoothie. It tastes really refreshing, and has some great nutrients. So, let's keep this simple with a diagram.

A few notes:

• Use a small amount of cucumber (1 inch round)
• The softer the fruit, the sweeter it will taste
• Use flax flakes, if mixer won't crush seeds
• Only about 8 cashews, and a teaspoon of flax
• Use fresh or canned beetroot - grate first, if using fresh 
• Fill a third with kombuch (or fruit juice) and the rest with water
• Blend for a minute, or until smooth - I use a Nutri-Ninja

Variation: add a sprig of fresh coriander leaves, to highlight the cucumber flavour.

Enjoy!

A green twist

With the rain and hugelkultur beds pumping along, we've had some amazing crops of kale lately. The brush turkey's decimated a few plants, but we managed to save the rest. We finally have something to harvest in the garden again.

What I love about kale, is making green smoothies with them. Thankfully, we received a windfall of pineapples from the store recently too, marked down for quick sale, which is perfect for our favourite kind of green smoothie recipe.

These are simply delicious. Don't let the idea of the ingredients put you off. The end result is best tasted, to be believed. We didn't realise how addicted we would become to these, and it's the green smoothie, which is responsible for kale making it into my garden beds.

Several kale leafs and other ingredients (I'll share the recipe soon) yield us two green smoothies for breakfast. This is a very refreshing way to start the day and feel good. We just use an ordinary blender, so no fancy equipment, but there is a method I have discovered for making them blend smoother. Which I will also explain.

So here is my recipe for:

Gully Grove Green smoothies

with a twist~

Ingredients:

4 large kale leafs

1/4 cup raw cashews

1 teaspoon flax seed

1 cup chilled water

1/2 a pineapple, chopped

the twist - 2 nasturtium leafs

Method:

1. If the kale stems are too fibrous, remove them. If you have equipment that will pulverise everything with fibre, feel free to leave the stems on. Pull the leafs apart with your hands and place them in the blender.

2. Add the rest of the ingredients next, leaving the chopped pineapple last of all. This order is important to ensure a smoother blend. As the lower ingredients will blend quickly, without the fibre of the pineapple taking up the gumption of the blades at first.

3. Blend for a full minute. The pineapple should start to incorporate, after 30 seconds. If not, pulse a few times, then continue the extended blend.

4. Serve in glasses, and rinse equipment immediately in water. Easiest way to clean.

Adding the nasturtiums leafs, gives it a slight peppery taste, but also lightens the palette as you're drinking it. If you have a more expensive piece of equipment, feel free to use a cup of ice-cubes, instead of the water, and make it more slushy like. You can even freeze the diced pineapple overnight, if you think your equipment and brain (freeze) can handle it. But I would leave the water liquid, if you're going to freeze the pineapple.

This is the best way I know, how to consume kale fresh...and it's delicious!

A new smoothie

So I was weeding the vegetable patch yesterday, in the cool of the afternoon, and I pulled up some beetroot, which I thought had succumb to the heat of summer. They had wilted, tiny leaves. But to my surprise they had small bulbs, and I thought of what I could make with such a meagre offering from the garden.

A recent post from a friend, had me contemplating a beetroot smoothie the following morning. So that's what I did. I cleaned, boiled and then removed the skin of the beetroot.

Ready to go

Now I don't have a fancy piece of equipment to make smoothies with, so in the past, they've been kind of chunky, with my regular blender. My Bamix stick-blender, on the other hand, probably had more chop. So I decided to give it an extra helping hand, by cooking the beetroot first and making it easier to pulverise.

 Frozen, cooked and raw ingredients

I sliced the cooled beetroot, got some frozen strawberries from the freezer, and readied a small portion of cashews for protein and healthy fats. From experience, I knew I had to help the cashews break down easier too. So in came the handy grinder, which attaches to my stick blender.

First grind

This made a rough meal, to which I added a teaspoon of flax seeds. After a bit more whizzing, it broke it down into a smoother meal. Flax seeds are a good source of manganese, vitamin B1 and Omega 3 fatty acids.

 Finished meal

Then it was time to load up my tall jug with everything, and see what my stick blender could do. I changed attachments of course, and ditched the grinder. As it whizzed around in the jug, I added some water and apple juice, to make it less thick and a little bit sweeter too. But not too sweet. I found it did need the apple juice to connect all the flavours.

 A beautiful red smoothie for breakfast

The texture was the best I've managed with my limited equipment before. Not chunky, just not liquid smooth. My taste tester, was delightfully enthusiastic as well.

What is this delightful concoction?

Not that you can tell by the picture, because it looks more like an impersonation of Heath Ledger's, Joker, from "The Dark Knight" movie, don't you think? Peter really liked it and so did I. It gave me quite a buzz for the morning. I also used the leftover beetroot juice, for mixing into our chicken feed. What was left of the beetroot leaves, also went to the chickens.

So I reckon I got my value's worth, from two surprise morsels in the weed patch vegetable garden.