Category — Green Drinks

A few weeks ago at my potluck group I talked about my list of top foods that I believe to be super nutrient rich. Stinging Nettles, urtica dioica, were on that list.

The reason I think they are so great is because they are rich in vitamins A, C, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. According to some sources they are one of the best plant sources of iron. They are 40 % protein which is considered high for a vegetable. Traditionally in folk medicine they were used to build the blood and treat anemia among other conditions. Recently they have been proven helpful to treat hay fever and osteoarthritis. (For more medicinal uses scroll down to the bottom of this post.)

Where to Get Stinging Nettles

To add stinging nettles to your diet, first you need to find them. I am lucky enough to live in Northern California where I can get them at the Marin Farmer’s Market for 6 dollars a pound. If you have a local wild edibles guided tour (please don’t eat any wild edible unless you are sure) you might be lucky to find them in shady spots, in flood plains, woodlands, along streams and river banks in Europe, Asia, North America, and Northern Africa. Or you can simply try to grow them in your own backyard. If you can’t get ahold of fresh nettles you can find dried nettles in the bulk herb section of your natural grocery store, which make a lovely tea.

Ouch!

They are called stinging nettles for a reason, they have stinging hairs which can really irritate your skin. For this reason I do not advise handling them with your bare hands. I personally use tongs, but you could use gloves as well. Some people recommend rolling them like a taco and then eating the leaves. Here is a video of David Wolfe, raw food author and speaker, showing you how to do just that.

Click here if you can’t see the video.

I personally prefer to enjoy them using the methods I describe below:

 The great thing about stinging nettles is that when you cook them, juice them, or blend them they loose their sting!

 My favorite thing is to make a nettle shake. (recipe below)

 Nettle Shake
(Thanks to Novalee for this idea)

2 cups fresh orange juice
1 cup nettles

 Blend for a minute in a high speed blender and enjoy. For a heartier drink you can add 1 banana and half an apple.

 Nettle Green Juice

You can also add nettles into your green juice. Just substitute whatever green you were going to use with nettles and run them through your juicer. I like to juice them with celery and apple.

Make Nettle Tea

Boil a pot of water and add a cup of nettles and let sit for at least 10 minutes. It makes the most beautiful emerald green tea you can imagine. Sweeten and enjoy.

Cooking Nettles

Nettles can be steamed or boiled and are probably one of the most delicious greens out there. They have a mild nutty flavor and can be substituted in any cooked recipe that calls for spinach or kale. They are so good that they can be enjoyed just steamed plain or perhaps with a touch of sea salt. I have also seen recipes where they are boiled with potatoes, leeks, and other ingredients to make a creamy blended soup.

Medicinal Uses

Nettles have been used medicinally in folk medicine for such things as: allergies, water retention, anemia, poor circulation, asthma, wound healing, as a diuretic, to build the blood, and for arthritis and rheumatism. Recently, nettles have been proven effective for treating hay fever and osteoarthritis.

*Now if you are going to use nettles medicinally I would definitely work with a professional for the correct dosage and there are some contraindications and drug interactions you might need to be aware of especially if you are pregnant, have kidney issues, diabetes, or are on blood pressure medication or other medications.

Hope you can enjoy this powerful superfood as a regular addition to your diet!

♥,
C

Sources:

Wikipedia/Stinging Nettles
Rain Tree/Nettles
Web MD/Stinging Nettles

Nettles

I know that in most of the U.S. the weather has cooled and people are gearing up for the cold winter ahead. Here in Northern California we usually have an Indian summer and just last weekend watermelons became in season at my local farm, hence the timing of this article!

 How to Pick a Watermelon

I have to admit that I never knew how to pick out a watermelon, which is strange considering my husband considers me an expert at picking out the ripest most sweet fruits whenever we go shopping. I have to say that at my local farm they were all good, but there is a trick to picking a sweet one that I finally mastered.

• The best advice I can give you is to buy them from a local farm or farmer’s market where they pick them when they are ripe.
• Then you want to make sure they have a yellow or light spot on them.  This spot develops from the watermelons sitting on the ground as they ripen. If a watermelon doesn’t have the spot it was likely picked too soon.
• Then you want to tap the watermelon and what you a listening for is a high pitched tone,  that my husband described as “springy” because the sound feels like it bounces back at you like you are tapping something that is hollow.
• The sound should NOT be low, flat, or dull. 
• If you follow this advice you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the quality of your watermelons.

Nutrition Info

I did a little research on watermelon and as it turns out they have a lot more nutrition in them than I realized. They are an excellent source of vitamin A, C, vitamin B1, and B6. In addition, watermelon is a good source of thiamin, potassium and magnesium. It is also a good source of beta carotene and red watermelon is a great source of the antioxidant, Lycopene.

Source:
The World’s Healthiest Foods

I couldn’t fine much information on the rind since most people in our country don’t eat the rind except for in the South. In the South and in some cultures they pickle it. What I did find though, is that it contains the amino acid known as citrulline. Our bodies use citrulline to make another amino acid, arginine, which helps cells to divide, wounds to heal, and has the ability to relax blood vessels among other important functions in our bodies.

Sources:
Want Citrulline? Try Watermelon
Watermelon May Have Viagra-effect

I also suspect there are other nutrients in the rind and, at the very least, they are a good source of chlorophyll.

 Juicing The Rind

One of the things that I’ve been doing lately is adding the rind along with the fruit to my green juices instead of cucumber or celery and I’ve gotten great results. Juicing the rind is a great way not to waste the rind and it cuts the sweetness of the watermelon juice. Not only do I feel great when I drink them, but I notice they keep me full for longer than I expected. I don’t feel a sugar rush and even though I know you aren’t supposed to combine watermelon with any other food for proper digestion, I found they digested fine. 

My tricks for watermelon for digesting well:

• Only eat ripe and sweet watermelon
• I always eat it alone or blended with greens or I juice it with greens and some other water rich fruit
• Always eat watermelon or watermelon drinks on an empty stomach
• Eat or drink watermelon very slowly
• Never overeat on watermelon! If you overeat on watermelon you will get a bad stomach ache that I affectionately call, watermelon tummy, but it really hurts!

 Watermelon Green Juice

1-2 small apples
3 crescent slices of watermelon with the fruit and rind
( about 3 cups chopped )
1 bunch parsley, cilantro, OR spinach
1 cup water

Chop all ingredients and blend in a high speed blender and squeeze through a sprout bag. If you want to make it less sweet you can substitute one of the apples for a small cucumber. Enjoy!

Please drink these juices on an empty stomach and slowly. Stop drinking them if you notice any stomach discomfort at all. I didn’t notice any discomfort but everyone is different.

If you live in Northern California I hope you can add this healing green juice to your routine, if not I hope you can enjoy it next summer!

♥,
C

The words green juice get thrown around a lot in the raw food arena and through my raw food phone consultations I get many questions about what a green juice actually is and how it differs from a green smoothie and a green soup.

Both a green smoothies, a green  juice, and a green soups are super important nutritious health promoting drinks.  If all you did was add either a green juice, a green smoothie, or a green soup to your diet, and change nothing else, you would notice a difference in your health.  (If you added all three, wow!)

It’s almost common knowledge that we should be consuming large amounts of green leafy vegetables, about 3-5 servings a day to be exact. This is due to their high vitamin and mineral content.

Green juices, smoothies, and soups are important because they allow us to easily absorb the nutrients from green leafy vegetables that are otherwise tough to break down and digest. Juicing and blending will help you to “pre-digest” the vegetables so you will receive most of their nutrition.  You would literally have to chew your green leafy vegetables into a creamy paste to get the same benefits as a green juice, smoothie, or soup.

Some of the many benefits of green leafy vegetables:

• Trace minerals: including iron, calcium, potassium, and magnesium and vitamins, including vitamins K, C, E, and many of the B vitamins
  (I’ve never been anemic since being vegan and I attribute this to my daily intake of green drinks)
• Good Source of Vegetable Protein
  (Some green vegetables have more protein per pound than meat!)
• Alkalizing abilities
• Not to mention Enzymes, Chlorophyl, and a host of Antioxidants including Beta-Carotene, Lutein, and Zeaxanthin, which protect our cells from damage.
• Dark green leaves even contain small amounts of Omega-3 fats.

What is a Green Juice?

A green juice is usually a non sweet juice (it usually does not contain much fruit, if any) that is usually composed of:

Celery
Cucumber
and your choice of leafy greens such as:
Spinach
Chard
Kale
Collards
Parsley
Cilantro
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Sprouts. . . (etc.)

Some extras to add to the green juice if desired:

Lemon
Lime
Fennel
Jicama
Zucchini
and pretty much any non starchy veggie of choice

For extra sweetness it is permissible to add small quantities of:
apples
carrots
beets
or pretty much any starchy vegetable of choice

Some people even like to add stevia leaves to their juice for added sweetness.

A green juice differs from a green smoothie because the fiber is taken out through juicing with a juicer or with a high speed blender or a sprout bag .

This removes most of the plant cellulose and makes the juice very easy to digest.  Juicing is great for people with compromised digestive systems. Green juices don’t typically have a lot of calories or fiber so they are not meant as a meal replacement but rather as a fresh raw drinkable multivitamin!

I usually drink my green juice first thing in the morning and then wait a few hours and then eat my normal breakfast. Juicing can be time consuming, so if I don’t have time during the week I reserve my weekend mornings specifically for juicing.

The best juicers to use with leafy greens are twin gear or single auger models that crush the juice out of the leaves. If you have a centrifugal juicer you can still juice your leafy greens by blending the greens in a blender with water and then pouring the green mixture through the mouth of your centrifugal juicer.

Don’t have a juicer? No problem. My favorite way to make juice is to blend everything in a powerful blender with a little water, and then pour the blended mixture through a sprout bag over a big bowl and voila, fresh juice!

The juice pulp can be made into dehydrated patties, mixed into a salad, mixed into your dog’s food, or composted.

Here is a great green juice recipe that includes some apples for sweetness but you can omit them if you want.

Apple Lemon Green Juice

5 ribs celery
1 large English cucumber
1/2 lemon
5 Swiss Chard Leaves (wash thoroughly)
2 apples (optional)

Put all the ingredients through a juicer. If you don’t have a juicer an alternative would be to chop the cucumber, apple, and celery and place it in a blender (cucumber first) with the Swiss Chard, peeled lemon, and a little water. Blend on high for about thirty seconds and then pour and squeeze the mixture through a sprout bag over a big bowl.

What is a Green Smoothie?

A green smoothie is simply a smoothie with about 60% fresh ripe organic fruit (sweet or non sweet fruit) and 40% fresh organic leafy greens blended in a blender with water. Anne Wigmore and more recently Victoria Boutenko have popularized these nutritious drinks.

Green smoothies are blended instead of juiced, so all the fiber remains intact. Because of the addition of the extra calories from fruit and the fiber in green smoothies, they can be considered a meal. Actually a green smoothie is my breakfast of choice and sometimes my lunch too!

Acoording to www.ehealthmd.com fiber does not raise blood glucose levels and is important for so many things including: preventing colon cancer, heart disease, diabetes, gall bladder and kidney stones, avoiding and relieving constipation, and keeping your weight under control.

Here’s a yummy green smoothie recipe. If you don’t have coconut water just use regular water and a pinch of stevia for extra sweetness.

Apple Strawberry Spinach Green Smoothie

1 cup strawberries
1 apple
1-2 bananas
3-5 ounces of spinach
½ vanilla bean chopped into small pieces
or 1 vanilla bean seeds scooped out
Water from 1 young coconut (about one and half cups)

Blend all ingredients in the blender and enjoy! The sweetness of the fruit masks the taste of the spinach. You will be surprised how delicious it tastes.

What is a Green Soup?

A green soup, sometimes known as energy soup, is blended in a blender like a green smoothie except for it usually does not contain sweet fruit but might contain vegetables, non sweet fruit, and greens. An example of some ingredients in a green soup:  avocado, cucumber, bell pepper, celery, carrot, greens, sprouts, raw unsalted sauerkraut, and other vegetables. It can be seasoned with herbs and spices and is great for those that are limiting their intake of fruit.

Here’s a Simple Green Soup Recipe

Tomato Parsley Basil Green Soup

3 large tomatoes
small bunch parsley (no stems)
handful of basil
handful of dulse seaweed
2 green onions
1/2 small avocado
pinch cayenne
little water to thin

Blend  all ingredients together and eat this as a soup with chopped green onion, avocado, Dulse or seaweed flakes, parsley, and raw unsalted sauerkraut.

Well I hoped this cleared up a few things! Whether you juice or blend your greens you will notice a positive difference in your health and energy. Some of the positie changes I have noticed in my health by regulary consuming green drinks are: increased energy, improved digestion, diminished cravings for unhealthy food, clear and soft skin, and a skin tab I was born with on my forehead shrank considerably! Cool.

For More Green Smoothie Recipes Please Check Out My Green Smoothie Challenge E-Book.

Enjoy Your Greens!

♥,
C