Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Green Smoothies Galore!

I've been doing green smoothies since getting sick but lately I've been more creative with blending the natural flavors. And garnishing them too! Here's my big time visual favorite - a nice candida killer with kale, cucumber for smoothness and natural low-glycemic sweetness, avocado for robustness, ginger as an antibacterial and antifungal, among other ingredients plus the crucial fresh-squeezed lemon juice at the end for adding the tangy alkaline twist. Topped with edible pansies, what an attractive feast for the eyes and a beast for candida!


After a liver cleanse, I try to eat salads, lightly steamed fibrous vegies and/or a tiny amount of steamed brown rice for pushing the refuse of the cleanse out of the colon and intestines. This is a power-packed liver cleansing smoothie with bitter dandelion greens. I used baby bok choy or cucumber to sweeten it up a bit naturally and a bit of avocado for robustness and calories/energy after being off of food for nearly 24 hours. Of course other ingredients like cherry tomatoes, cabbage, onion, garlic, ginger, etc got tossed in too for a tongue-satisfying blend.



This was a spinach, parsley, cherry tomato, sesame leaf green smoothie. There was a tiny wedge of onion, a couple cloves of garlic, perhaps a bit of ginger and no lemon in this one. The sesame leaf is rather zesty-bitter-acrid, a bit like dandelion greens, and they are loaded with micronutrients (Asians really testify to their healthfulness!). Their bitterness was softened by the addition of sweetish spinach leaves and acidic-but-still-sweet tomato.


Cucumber, baby bok choy, celery, a few cherry tomatoes and ginger were the principle ingredients. Somehow I got the ingredients exactly right as the drink was smooth with the correct balance of sweet (from the cucumber and baby bok choy) and salty (from the celery. The tomato was the acid that wed the alkalines together.


Here is a Asian cabbage, spinach, onion and tomato blend. These are the basics as the flavorings like a touch of fresh parsley, a couple cloves of garlic and perhaps some lemon juice or a touch of olive oil was added at the end to blend the flavors all together.


This was a grand experiment. I used soaked rosehips (soaked overnight). They are extremely high in vitamin C, but they also have a fair amount of natural sugar, so as I said, it was an experiment for trying something new but not necessarily beneficial for ridding the system of candida. The main ingredients -- rosehips, lots of parsley, celery, garlic and ginger, and of course lemon juice to add zip to the sweet rosehips. The smoothie was OK, but I need to do a little tweaking on the amounts ... or maybe add some other ingredient like spinach leaves which would make it have a more well-rounded flavor.


A couple things about drinking green smoothies. They are extremely high in the natural vegetable enzymes, which are excellent for supporting digestion. And if green leafies are used, especially dark green leafies, the chlorophyll in the leafies act as excellent transports for toxins; they attach themselves to the toxins and escort them out of the body. Sooooo, drink green smoothies! A word of caution though on green smoothies, each vegetable is packed with vitamins and minerals and if a person weren't to rotate the vegies, a toxic overload of the beneficial vitamins and minerals could occur, so drink green smoothies as much as possible but rotate the vegies so as not to get a vitamin- or mineral overdose.

This green smoothie was based around the spinach, which I haven't had for a few days, so perfect. My body is ready to "drink up" the nutrients that the fresh spinach is loaded with!

 

4 comments:

  1. Hi! This is kuki.
    I'd like to make any green drink out of above maybe with the ingredients what I have available at my place tonight!
    cyerl, I lost your phone number because sommething happend with my phone. So I came up with the idea to write here in your blog.
    When you see this please message me at your convienient time. It looks just awesome!!

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  2. Kuki, I tried to call but you didn't pick up. Anyway, you can call me back, but if you didn't receive an unknown caller around 6pm, then leave your number here (only I will ever see it) and I'll contact you with that number. Busy tomorrow?

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  3. Dear Cheryl,

    Thank you for the post. The smoothies look great! I would like to start making and rotating them as my everyday snack ( what a great kitchen aid Blendtec is! one of my best buys. Thank you for a good advice!). Do you add any water in your smoothie, or it's all cucumber, bok choy, celery and cabbage juice ?) Would you recommend putting iceberg leaves in smoothie or are they too tender for it? I read that you are not even supposed to cut iceberg leaves, so that steel blade doesn't destroy vitamins. You just brake them down with your fingers for salads.
    Would adding a piece of raw onions and garlic clove be ok for IBS if I put a quarter of avocado, or a T spoon of hemp seeds or a T spoon of soaked nuts or seeds and a piece of turmeric for smoothness? Thank you,
    Have a great week,

    Valentyna.

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    Replies
    1. To take stress off of your blender and keep from burning up the motor, you should add some water to at least cover the blades. And you're right, the steel blades beat the lettuce and almost instantly the lettuce is brown. Bok choy and cabbage can take the beating but lettuce can't. As for eating garlic and onions when you have IBS, prob not a good idea. My mom's IBS resulted in instant bloat when she touched those two. Not nice!

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