Green Smoothies

I am one of those people who walks around with a mason jar full of green smoothie, or green goo as a friend calls it. It seems to fasinate or horrify people who see it.

Some even try it. My niece was visiting recently and watched me make this green masterpiece every morning & decided to try it. As we drove around to beaches & trails & farmer's markets she also carried the mason jar of green stuff.

Such a great way to have a breakfast in a jar that gives you a lot of nutrition and keeps you full until lunch, but more importantly doesn't weigh you down & make you sleepy.



What to put in your smoothie:

some sweet fruit to make it taste good, frozen if that's all that's available

a banana or even a 1/2 an avocado if you need it to be really filling

a bunch of lettuce greens - like 1/2 a blenderful, this ensures you are getting your leafy greens & provides lots of protein & nutrients

I use water in mine, you could use some yogurt or almond milk

I add most of my supplements in here too, experiment with with, some people don't like the taste of B vitamins or other supplements, I am fine with it. I find that this way I am not having to swallow a lot of vitamins and I get a slower steady supply of them as I sip my shake.

Sunchoke Salad

I grew sunchokes this year for the first time. They are huge plants that kind of look like sunflowers. My plants are about 10 feet tall. The flowers are smaller & have less petals than a sunflower though. I cut the tops off & brought the flowers in. You eat the tubers, they look kind of like bumpy potatoes.

Now that it is October (ok, starting today its November) I am harvesting the sunchokes a few at a time. These are best harvested after a frost. I'll just keep going down to the garden & getting a few at a time since they don't last too long in the fridge.

Sunchokes aka Jerusalem Artichokes are rich in inulin which helps to balance blood sugar.  And they help to improve bacteria ecology in the colon.

I just eat raw food, so although they can be cooked, I have been finding ways to eat them raw. I bring them
along with a few apples when I go out harvesting herbs & just eat one like an apple. And yesterday I harvested a bunch to marinade in apple cider vinegar along with a piece of hot pepper, peppercorns, herbs, and garlic.

Freshly dug sunchokes

And some kale and a calendula flower from the garden

I sliced the sunchokes on the mandolin (carefully to keep my fingers intact) & marinaded them & the kale in lime, garlic, Bragg & olive oil.

Poured all that over the greens & added the calendula petals.

Harvesting Dandelions

Fall is the time to harvest dandelion roots.

I use the tops fresh in the juicer (using just a handful of leaves, you need to assess the condition of your liver before having too many of them juiced) and drying the rest of the tops for infusions during the winter. 

I slice the roots & dry them in a warm place - near the wood stove. Those I will use in  infusions this year, since I have plenty of tincture leftover from last year.

I have hung the tops on a little clothesline near the woodstove.

Mushrooms

Went to a local mushroom identification workshop this weekend. I have never learned about how to ID mushrooms before. It was very interesting & something I will look more into. We have so many kinds of mushrooms on the island ( apparently around 4,000 kinds !)

Found some chanterelles,  & a few other kinds as well.

Chanterelles hiding

I am in the process of working way more with our local trees: harvesting leaves & twigs, & making some salves, vinegars, infusions & tinctures. I will be including this information in my 2012 Herbal Apprenticeship & will most likely offer a workshop on local medicinal trees next spring.