In a quest to eat healthier, hubby and I started on a new diet, a new way of eating. We are using the Hallelujah Diet as our guide. It is a plant-based diet with a goal that at least 85% of food intake is raw. I have to tell you, this is a challenge and quite different from our previous diet. We had been eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and I was cooking nearly everything from scratch, but this is step further. There is much less cooking and much more preparing of fresh produce.
Something we have begun to incorporate into our daily diet are green smoothies. Although familiar with smoothies, I had never heard of a green smoothie before. It is a smoothie packed full of fruit, but also leafy green vegetables such as spinach or kale. Greens are packed full of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and even protein. But who wants to consume platefuls of greens every day? By mixing them in a smoothie with lots of fruit, you get a sweet treat AND your greens.
Since, we have started this diet, the green smoothies are what we seem to get asked the most about, so I thought I would share how we make them. I don't use a recipe, but more of a formula:
- 1 to 1 1/2 cups liquid: I usually use water, but you can use juice for a sweeter smoothie, or milk for a creamier one. Almond milk is very tasty.
- 1 to 2 bananas: They make it creamy and sweet. You can use fresh or frozen. We take over-ripe bananas, peel them, and keep them in a ziplock in the freezer. Watch for reduced, brown bananas in your grocer's produce department next time you are there.
- 1 to 2 handfuls of greens: Spinach is my favorite, but kale is tasty. Sometimes I mix in some beet greens. Put in what you like, the darker the green the better. I avoid strong tasting ones like turnip greens because I prefer to taste the fruit not the greens in my smoothie.
- 1 to 2 cups fruit: Whatever you like is good. Red grapes are sweet and delicious. Since it is winter, I have been using frozen fruit a lot. You can find big bags of blueberries and strawberries. There is also a nice blend of mango, peach, pineapple and strawberry. Yummy! This is a good opportunity to use fruit that is getting a bit soft to just eat. I am not a fan of squishy kiwi, but they are delightful in a smoothie.
- Extras: Some things I like to add to our smoothies are fresh ginger (a little bit goes a long way), milled flax seed, or a spoonful of nut butter ( good if this is going to replace a meal). If the fruit I used was not very sweet, I may add some honey, or dates.
Hubby takes a quart of this to work with him every day. I usually drink some green smoothie at breakfast and often put it in my travel mug when I have to eat on the run. Our day schedules have been pretty busy this year and often I am struggling to get my lunch in at home. It is usually acceptable to bring a cup into a meeting, but not a meal. Everyone assumes that I am just drinking my coffee, when often I am "eating" my lunch right in front of them.
Even if you don't want to radically change your diet, adding green smoothies will benefit you. They are full of healthy goodness and will help to curb your appetite. Victoria Boutenko in her book, Green for Life
, talks about an experiment they did called the Roseburg Study where they got 27 people to commit to drinking a quart of green smoothie daily for a month. They didn't change their lifestyle otherwise. Then they documented the changes in their health. It was pretty remarkable. So there you have it. As my husband says, we are becoming hippies with all this healthy living. It is our running joke. If being a hippy means feeling better and losing weight, I am OK with that!
Other green smoothie resources:
- Green Smoothie Girl
- Green Smoothies Blog
- Green Smoothie Questions
Green Smoothie Revolution: The Radical Leap Towards Natural Health
Green Smoothies Diet: The Natural Program for Extraordinary Health
How Green Smoothies Saved My Life: A Guide for Using Green Smoothies, Uplifted Thinking, and Live Food to Enhance Your Life
Cooking for Isaiah
. In it, the author has a recipe for for a gluten-free all-purpose baking mix that she uses for all of her recipes (which are also dairy-free). I decided to mix some up and create some crepes. I suppose this was pretty adventurous since I have never done the gluten-free thing OR ever made crepes. They were delicious! We stuffed them with fresh apples, raisins, honey and cinnamon. My only complaint was that they took forever to make. That was only because I had one pan to make them in and had to do them one at a time. That was a s-l-o-w process when cooking for a family of eight. Next time we will stick with pancakes and put the fruit on top because I can get a couple of griddles going at once so we aren't cooking all morning.
Next I decided to tackle gluten-free bread. I have shared before that I have been making bread for the past couple of years using the 
includes several gluten-free recipes. I picked one that the main ingredient was corn starch of all things. Although the dough does not behave like traditional bread dough, the bread came out very good with a heavy yet springy texture. My daughter was thrilled to have bread once again! Next time I may try
that you could substitute 1 tablespoon of soy flour plus 2 tablespoons of water for 1 egg in a recipe. There it was done for frugality, I decided to try it for health restrictions. It seemed to work just fine. I have never tried the egg versions of these recipes to compare, but we were very satisfied with how things came out. I think you can by a soy-based egg substitute, but I am sure it costs way more than this method.
out loud to the kids. That is a good one, but a little over the heads of the younger children. Last year we got the audio version of 
. It is a really cute story and although it is written to younger audience, it has appeal even for adults with a great message about the transforming power of Jesus. A friend mentioned that she reads this book every year because she loves it and I thought that it might be a great tradition to read it aloud in our home. So, I made the investment in it (which is a big deal for me because I rarely by books but instead rely on the library). So, far the younger kids are really enjoying it. I hope to do a little each day and time it to finish just before Christmas.
