I’m just starting and the first smoothie I made turned an awful shade of brown. My husband wouldn’t touch it. I made it with frozen spinach and frozen raspberries. Would this cause the brown? I made another smoothie today and it was a beautiful green and tasted much better. Of course I used all fresh ingredients this time. Any hints when using frozen products. I don ‘t want another “brown” smoothie.
The mildness of the kumkwat rind is such that you can eat the whole fruit, rind and all. Can I replace the lemon rind with a whole kumkwat in the smoothies, or does the lemon rind have something special in it that kumkwats do not. I’m thinking of stocking up on kumkwats and freezing them while they’re in season.
First, the question: I would like to buy an abundance of greens at the farmers market and freeze them. I know Robyn has mentioned freezing greens, but has anyone tried it? and how did you freeze them? I’m thinking that if I freeze them in ziploc bags, they will be a frozen ’sheet’ of greens that won’t fit in the blender, OR will I need to defrost them first?
The recipe: Want some really good/good for you ginger ale? I just made some wonderful ginger honey. I peeled some* ginger, sliced it thin, put it in a 1/2 pint mason jar, smashed it with a wooden pestle (you could use a wooden spoon handle), filled the jar with raw honey, loosely screwed on a lid, and set it in my dehydrator on about 115* overnight. *I used about a tablespoon of ginger to @ 8 oz. of honey.
In the morning, I scraped the honey into another jar through a small piece of cheesecloth (let the cheesecloth ’sag’ into the jar and hold it with a rubber band or screw top). Take off the cheesecloth with the ginger in it and twist it to get most of the honey out. Now, I don’t like to waste ANYTHING, so I take the cheesecloth with the ginger and swirl it through my cup of tea – yum.
I find lots of uses for this, but my favorite is ginger ale. I just add some syrup to some sparkling mineral water (Gerolsteiner and Perrier are naturally carbonated). I quit drinking soda long ago, but use to really like ginger ale. This is so much better than the artificial stuff.
Also, I use to buy ginger syrup from the health food store. It was $8.00 – $10.00 a bottle. This probably costs pennies to make.
Next week is my halfway mark on the 12 steps! I love whole foods and that’s mostly all I eat. My husband has a 64oz soda most days, eats fast food most days, feeds my kids pizza and chips all weekend, and brings home 4# bags of m&ms along with the big bag of spinach from Costco. Despite that, the overall change in diet in our home has been dramatic in the last six months. My husband bragged enough about what I was doing at work that the ladies he works with told him he should buy me a vitamix for Christmas and he did (well, a Blendtec).
In 12-steps, Robyn talks about how she was raised eating fruits and vegetables. So that prompts my question. What is your food heritage, did it play a major role in preparing you to accept 12-steps?
The way a child is trained to eat is very powerful. My mother-in-law always says, “I’m a lazy cook, I want minimal or no preparation involved in my meals (heat and eat) and I don’t want to try new stuff.” (She also wants it to be super cheap). My father-in-law wants a soda every day and anything that is mostly sugar. No surprise that their four sons all eat fast food daily, drink soda daily, and buy their candy by the pound. This tradition of no-preparation is so ingrained that they actually prefer commercially prepared bread, cakes, cookies, and pies over homemade simply because the thought of the effort involved in homemade disgusts them.
My heritage: as long as I can remember, my mother has always been saying “I found this NEW recipe/restaurant!” She wants to taste every new exciting thing on the planet. She is a FABULOUS cook, everything she tries is awesome and she never cooks the same thing twice. When we go home for the holidays we pick a country for every day and plan exciting menus. My Dad loves anything out of a garden. We’ve always been amazed about how he will choose fresh fruit and veggies over cookies and candy every time. Well, it should come as no surprise that me and three of my siblings hate fast food because the menu is so boring (hamburger or hamburger?) We also don’t like to go to most restaurants unless they serve something really unique that we can’t make at home. The other sibling doesn’t cook, but he loves expensive, exotic restaurants. There are no veggie haters among us. I was surprised to learn that people were scared off by the color of green smoothies. I just don’t get scared by anything new, the greener the better at our house.
Legacy to my kids: I wish I was as exciting as my mom, because by comparison, my legacy to my kids sounds lame, but this is it, “If it isn’t healthy, it can’t be good”. They might eat the junk food that still creeps into our house, but they always want to know which foods are bad. I can already see my mantra rubbing off on them. If I say something is bad, they ask if there is a way to make a healthy alternative, what unusual thought patterns for little kids, I love it. If they like two foods, they’ll always ask which is healthier before picking their favorite. In addition, I have their solemn promise to never, ever, ever drink a caffeinated soda and I remind them often *grin*.
I got some of the bread starter and I was thinking it would come with some bread recipes variations. Is anyone willing to share the recipe for foccacia(?) or the sourdough bread variation 2. I have most of the recipe collections but they don’t have those recipes in them. I would love to make them tonight! Thanks!!
I have been working on an index of Robyn’s recipes from the complete 12-step recipe collection, which I am more than happy to share with any fellow 12-steppers. The recipes are indexed by main ingredient, as well as by any other ingredient that had a strong “presence” in the recipe. My thought was that if I went to a farmer’s market, for example, and bought a bunch of fresh kale, I could then go to the “Vegetables/Kale” listing to find all the recipes that had a decent amount of kale in it. Also, I did some general categories (e.g., soups, pastas). I also included recipes from Robyn’s Holiday collection, but have not had time to enter the ones from the Lunch collection. I can’t figure out how to post it here, so if you’re interested please e-mail me at kachcamom@gmail.com. I would love any feedback on it!
I recently received an Aerogarden (hydroponics) and I was wondering if the plants still had the nutrional value since they weren’t being grown in soil. Supposedly you are giving them nutrition by feeding them a solution but I don’t know what it is. Since this looks like it will take some time to get the plants growing and producing I just wanted to find out if anyone new if they produced vegetables with nutrional value? Is this worth growing produce or should I take it back? Thanks for your help! Jennifer
At some point in my green smoothie exploration I remember Robyn talking about a cake made with beets. Does anyone have this recipe?
Long story short… we went to ER yesterday with our daughter only to find out she is constipated!!!Errrr…
Is there a clease that children can do, safely?
I have her drinking lots of water, prune juice and gave her pepto….
Help, please!
I made the raw fudge. YUM. Now I have some Cacao nibs (fermented–does anyone know what that’s all about?), and want to know if I can substitute an equal amount of nibs for cocoa powder, or do I need to make some adjustments. The price I paid for the nibs–I don’t wanna mess up–ya know?