1st Green Smoothies

We bought a large bag of spinach, collard greens, and mustard greens today and I made green smoothies.  The girls love fruit smoothies and green juice, so getting them to drink a green smoothie was a no brainer.  They loved it and came back for more.  :)

Since I don't have a fancy blender, I was a little worried about it not blending well enough.  But it did just fine.  I guess that is what the "liquify" button is for. *duh*  Here is what I used today:

2 big handfuls spinach
1 large handful collard greens
1 large handful mustard greens
juice from 5 apples
1 frozen banana
9 or 10 frozen strawberries
frozen blueberries (didn't measure, just poured in on top)
1 stevia packet
1 Tbs ground flax seed

First I put in half the greens with apple juice, blended, added the rest of greens and blended.
At this point I had an almost full blender.
I added the banana, a few strawberries and a bit of blueberries and blended again.
Then I poured half out into a cup so I would have more blending room.  I added more berries and blended.  This had a nice purple color to it and is what I filled up the girls glasses with.
Then I poured the rest of the green juice back in, remembered the stevia and flax seed, and blended once more.

This is what David and I drank. (and the girls when they wanted more - I think they just liked having green moustaches!)  It was actually even more delicious than a regular fruit smoothie, in my opinion.  Something so incredibly fresh tasting about it and even a hint of spicy flavor - must be one of those greens.  Really a delicious combination.  Essentially, this was my lunch because I just ended up being too busy to eat and I didn't feel hungry and felt good.  I'm looking forward to making these a regular part of our diet!

Winter Gardening


I got a second seed catalog in the mail and decided to turn it into a craft for the girls.  I taped together sheets of brown construction paper and gave them to the girls to be their garden plots. (except for Trinity had to have one brown sheet and one black sheet - you can't fool that girl - she's seen Iowa dirt! lol!)  Then they each got a catalog to cut out pictures of veggies, fruits, and flowers to plant in their gardens.  They had the best time and have beautiful gardens. :)

Corn

We were almost out of corn, so our neighbor graciously made another run to the elevator with his pickup.  This time we got a smidge over a ton of corn.  We had to be creative to come up with enough containers to hold all the corn!  David started out in the back of the pickup filling up containers, but we quickly figured out I couldn't muscle the bags out that he was filling. (supposed to be 50# each, but he filled them waaaay higher and since they are open at the top, you can't just heave them over your shoulder)  So I took over filling bags and containers and he hauled bags into the basement and checked in on the kids regularly.

Near the end of the bagging, I gave my back a break and stood up for a stretch.  I was wishing I had my camera.  The sun was almost down and the sunset was a beautiful contrast to the snow covered world.  There is something so peaceful about a world blanketed with white.  I just enjoyed the crisp breeze and appreciated how good it felt to be working hard to provide us with the means to heat our home.  There is something that just feels right in my soul when I am working up a sweat actually doing something vs. exercising for the sake of exercising.  It didn't matter that it was less than 20 degrees out.  It was soul work.

Posted in: green smoothies, Raw_Vegan Lane on Monday, December 28, 2009 at at 11:09 PM