The Great Tastes of Summer

Now that it is late into the summer season, most of our gardens are brimming with ripe fruits, tomatoes, veggies, and herbs. Don't waste any time putting these fresh organic nutri-dense ingredients on the dinner table as minimally processed a possible. Fresh salads, cold soups, smoothies, pesto, and salsas are a great way to maximize taste as well as nutrition. 

Salad greens, pick fresh and toss them in a salad or into the blender with some seasonal fruit and a little chia and ice for a delicious as well as nutritious meal, high in absorbable calcium and protein.

This summer I have had a surplus of basil in my garden and have been making this pesto sauce for my family every week throughout  the month of August. In September I harvest all of my basil, wash, dry and blend it in EVOO and store it small freezer bags for fresh pesto or to add to sauces during the winter. While I've never actually measured my ingredients, below is pretty much the recipe for how I make my vegan pesto, my family loves it and no-one misses the dairy :) 

Delicious Vegan Pesto:

2 cups Basil leaves

1 cup baby greens- optional (spinach, arugula, baby kale)

2 cloves garlic

1/4 sweet Vidallia onion

1/4-1/2 cup walnuts or pine nuts

1/4 cup (approx, maybe a little more) Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 tsp of balsamic vinegar

1/2 tsp Sea salt or Himalayan pink salt

!/4 cup Nutritional Yeast  

Blend all of the ingredients in a food processor or blender, add a handful of pine nuts to the blended pesto, then pour over ww pasta, grilled veggies, or use as a spread on crustini or in sandwiches and wraps.

These are approximate measurements to use as guideline, add what and however much of what you like.

Please feel free to post a comment or share your favorite summer recipes here!

Yes, We Are What We Eat! and Yes, we are entitled to the truth about what we are eating...

                                           Eat Well-Feel Well
To maintain  a healthy and disease free lifestyle, Green Smoothies and Juicing are a great start and addition to our diet, but we have to keep our diet in balance and studies show that a whole-foods plant-based diet is the healthiest diet by far to prevent diseases like Cancer, heart disease, auto-immune and diabetes. Removing dairy and meat from your diet can have a profound effect on your health before you know it!
Choose live, living foods which give us life, as much as possible. Include a green salad with raw veggies with your meals, the live enzymes will help with digestion, you will feel the difference and your body will thank you!

Some great sources to get you started on your quest for Great Health and TRUE Nutrition... 
Not what we've learned in the past that has led to so much illness, obesity, and suffering
The China Study, by Dr. T. Colin Campbell
Green For Life, by Victoria Boutenco
Eat to Live, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman 
Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, by Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr, MD 
 Watch the documentary here for free... Fat , Sick, & Nearly Dead  www.hulu.com/watch/289122
Other great informative documentaries to watch are
Food Inc.
Food Matters   http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/food-matters/
Forks Over Knives  www.hulu.com/watch/279734    
Chow Down  http://www.hulu.com/watch/172558  
Earthlings  http://earthlings.com/?page_id=32- Warning! this film is very graphic and not recommended for children!

Remember to exercise... A 30 minute walk daily is a great start!  

Smoothies 101 & 201 Classes -Sept./Oct.

Smoothies 101;                              Smoothies 201                                Weight Loss Class:
 Dates TBA                                      Dates TBA                                      TBA

* Next Group Food Shop- FairWay Market- Date TBA

I highly recommend the group shopping, it's a fun, supportive way to learn and share ideas with like minded people.  It's a great opportunity to answer many of your questions and is a great way to expand on our new knowledge of healthy eating. And it's shopping... :D

Transition toWholefoods classes beginning this Fall...

Look for future class dates, I will be holding an intermediate level Smoothies Class for those whoe want to take nutrition to an even higher level with superfoods.
I also plan to offer a series of  3 classes classes called "Transition To Whole Foods" for those who would like to graduallly and painlessly convert their families over to a "Whole Foods Diet".
A "whole foods diet" is key for optimal health!
I will offer samples of delicious Whole Food Snacks at the Smoothies classes to give you an idea how possible this is to do, if you have great recipes as well as support.

contact info:  greensmoothiesmom@gmail.com

You say Qui-no-a... I say Keeen-wahhh...

        How ever you pronounce it , quinoa is a highly nutritious, newly rediscovered grain-like seed of the ancient Incas from 5,000 years ago. In the 1600's the Spanish Conquistadors tried to annihilate the Inca culture, and burned all of their native crops. Somehow quinoa survived growing wild in the Andes Mountains and was only rediscovered  recently. Quinoa is a highly nutritious gluten-free grain that is a complete protein and is high in calcium, phosphorus, and iron, making it extremely suitable for vegans, vegetarians, and those with gluten restrictions. It has a light nutty taste and comes in a rainbow of different colors.
       I have a few recipes that my family likes, but tonight I tried making a quinoa tabouli salad and I have to say it turned out better than I could have imagined. The delicate flavor and texture of the quinoa is not overbearing so you really taste the flavor of the veggies. Tabouli is a great summer salad  made with bulgur wheat, that is usually made with tomatoes, but since good tomatoes during winter in the NorthEast are nonexistant, I replace them with cucumbers which my kids seem to like even better. Cucumbers are highly alkalyzing which is a great addition to anyones diet. For this quinoa version, I used both.
Here is the recipe for my

                                          Quinoa Tabouli Salad

2 cups cooked and cooled Quinoa
1 med. cucumber
3 Campari tomatoes
1 cup fresh Italian parsley-chopped
1/3 cup fresh mint leaves chopped
2 -3tsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 -3Tbs. extra-vigin olive oil
1/2-tsp. sea salt or Himalayan pink salt

Except for the quinoa, mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl, making sure veggies are coated with the dressing, then add the quinoa in, tossing lightly. Allow the salad to sit for 30 minutes before serving to allow the flavors to marry.

The Mother of Green Smoothies

Victoria Boutenko, Raw Foodist, Author, creator of the Green Smoothie is, in my opinion, a visionary. After  her family was diagnosed with several life threatening diseases, she healed them by switching them all over to a completely raw foods diet. While the raw diet was keeping them all healthy, she felt that they were still lacking nutritionally, so she continued her research. What she learned was that humans and chimpanzees share 99.4% of their genes, and that chimpanzees had superior immunity next to ours. She then paid closer attention to their diets and observed that the chimpanzees' diet was dramatically different from ours.Chimpanzees consume a much higher percentage of greens than humans and she realized that was key to our nutrition. Victoria tried to add a significant amount of greens to her own diet ,only to find it impossible to chew that many daily, so she decided to blend them with fruit and that made the greens consumption feasible as well as pleasant! In her book "Green For Life" she states that by drinking Green Smoothie we bathe our inner bodies with liquid sunlight (chlorophyll). The more chlorophyll we consume the better our overall health! She also documents that chlorophyll has been proven helpful in preventing and healing many forms of cancer and arteriosclerosis.