Foodie Friday: Smoothies

And yes, I know it's Saturday, but Foodie Saturday just isn't alliterative. I MEANT to post yesterday. Does that count?

Today's topic is smoothies. Maybe this is a no-brainer for my two readers, but sometimes I have "why didn't I think of that?" moments, and since I've had requests for recipes for things we frequently eat, I wanted to include smoothies, as they make up a nearly daily portion of our diet, particularly in warm weather.

There isn't a recipe, so much as some guidelines I follow for nutritious, tasty smoothies. You don't need special equipment: a decent blender or food processor will do (and if you have a magnificent machine like the Blend-Tec, all the better!) However, my smoothie-making tools of choice are a Mason jar and an immersion blender. The immersion, or stick blender, is one of my kitchen necessities. It's right under the food processor in my "wouldn't-want-to-be-without" items. I'm not a gadget person, choosing to keep my counters and drawers clutter free and my methods streamlined, but I have a love affair with my immersion blender.

For the children's smoothies, I start with about 1/2 cup frozen fruit, 1/4 cup homemade, whole-milk kefir (or yogurt. We prefer kefir because it has more high-quality bacteria than yogurt),  and Stevia to taste, per person. Blend until smooth. This is the basic method. To increase the nutrition, I add a handful of spring greens, a chunk of cucumber, and/or a couple stalks of celery. For the children, the key is going heavy on the fruit, and lighter on the veggies, particularly strong tasting veggies like dandelion greens or celery, until they grow accustomed to the slight vegetable taste. For the grownups, I do it the opposite: light on the fruit, heavy on the vegetables. I usually start with 1 cup of frozen fruit, 1/4-1/2 cup of kefir or yogurt, a large handful of spring greens, one large handful of dandelion greens, a big chunk of cucumber, and a couple stalks of celery. It is very important to blend thoroughly, as few things spark protests in this house like finding chunks in the smoothies! These guidlines will make a very thick smoothie. In fact, it's so thick that I often serve it as "sorbet" in a bowl with a spoon. For drinkable smoothies, you'll want to add milk. I use either raw, grass-fed milk, or unsweetened coconut milk, for different twist.

Add-ins: A lot of people add flax or chia meal to their smoothies, but we get both of these in the baking I do, so I don't add them.
If I'm using the smoothie as a meal for lunch or breakfast, I like to add coconut or coconut oil to add filling fat to the mix.
A couple tablespoons of coconut flour also boosts fat, carbs, protein, and fiber.
Vanilla or coconut extract can make the smoothie even more flavorful.

During the summer, I often keep a jar of smoothie in the fridge to fill popsicle molds. The children love this. I also like to use re-usable snack pouches like these to fill with smoothies for on the go. If you have leftover smoothie, you can freeze it in these pouches for a quick healthy meal option for an outing. Stick them in the lunch bag frozen, and let them slowly defrost while you run your errands. There are many brands out there, and I'm sure most of them work great. The link I posted is the brand I use (bought for a song on an eco-baby site), and I know these work well. They're bpa free and easy to clean. They will leak if you overfill them, but otherwise they've been great.

Flavor combination ideas: mango and coconut milk with cinnamon OR mango and mint leaves...I'm eager to try this as the herbs come into season.
blackberry and cucumber
red raspberry and dandelion greens
strawberry and celery
blueberry and mixed greens


Throw the ingredients in a jar and puree:

Yum:

And I recommend a straw for the tiny humans:

Foodie Friday: Eat your vegetables desserts

Been a while since I did a Foodie Friday. Oh, who am I kidding? It's been a while since I've posted anything regularly. I just can't get my act together. I mean, I'm only doing school with Mercy, working on an extensive reading list with all four of the pickles, doing circle time with memory work, sewing their summer wardrobe, cooking vast amounts of food, laundry, dishescleaningdishescleaninglaundry...I know, I know. Stop making excuses.

Anyway, the Sommers pickles are very good eaters. They eat lacto-fermented foods and drinks, Brussels sprouts, liver, salads, and I could go on and on. We limit the sweet food they get so they have a taste for good nourishing foods, and it seems to work. Mercy, especially seems to take after her daddy and have a monstrous sweet/carb tooth, but she's learned to eat and like a broad spectrum of foods. Despite the fact that they already eat well, my obsessive-compulsive passion for nourishing food has led me to look for even more ways to pack good foods into their diet. I've made my own tomato sauce, pureeing green beans, spinach, and peppers into it, for a long time,  I grind liver and mix it with pastured ground beef in meatballs or lasagna, put pastured gelatin into soups and stews (good for the gut and joints), and finely chop veggies and put them in smoothies. But recently, I've made some downright brilliant nourishing desserts with "secret" ingredients, and I'm sharing those here. 

First is my red velvet torte. It is grain free, full of beety goodness. And it's beautiful, with it's deep purplish-red color when you slice it.

Red Velvet Torte (grain free)

Servings:12

Oven:350

Time:45 minutes

5 cups grated beets

1 cup water

1.5 cups rapadura or palm sugar (I prefer palm sugar)

8 eggs

1 cup butter, softened

2 Tablespoons vanilla

1.5 teaspoon almond extract (optional. If omitted, add more vanilla)

1 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon sea salt

Simmer beets, water, and sweetener over medium heat until beets are very tender. Cool. Puree beet mixture in food processor or with immersion blender until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and mix until smooth and well blended. Prepare a springform pan by greasing well with butter and lining bottom with greased parchment paper. Pour batter into pan and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until center is set and a tester comes out clean.

After baking, let cool completely and chill in fridge for several hours before removing from pan. Top with homemade sweetened whipped cream, and garnish with cocoa or shaved chocolate and tart berries.

****

Next is my avocado fudge, which can be served as fudge "candy," pudding, or frozen bars.You will not believe how decadent this treat is. It is rich and creamy and fudgy. Here are two of my sweet boys enjoying "fudgesicles" after a warm afternoon playing outside

 Chocolate Avocado Fudge

Servings: about 20 small pieces, 8-12 frozen bars, or 8 small servings of pudding

1 very ripe banana

2 ripe avocado

1/4 cup melted coconut oil

1 tsp vanilla

3 Tbsp raw honey or maple syrup 

3 Tbsp cocoa or carob

1/2 tsp salt

  In a food processor or with an immersion blender, process the banana, avocado, vanilla, and sweetener until smooth. Add coconut oil and process again.  Add cocoa and salt and process until mixed well.  

Can be eaten right away. It is amazingly creamy as a pudding (if you're watching calories, you'll want to resist the urge to eat a whole cup of it. It's nutritious, but quite calorie dense)

For fudge, pour into a silicone pan or shallow baking dish to 1/2 inch thickness. Can be cut into squares or with small cookie cutters once it's firm. Freeze for about an hour until solid. I use silicone heart-shaped ice cube trays. They were the perfect size, and also adorable for my foodie children.

For "fudgesicles" pour mixture into silicone freeze pop molds and freeze until solid. I think these would also work well in push-pop molds.

Notes: I have added a pinch of stevia (to taste) and omitted the other sweeteners.

I have also used carob powder rather than cocoa. Honestly, it's best with the cocoa, but because of the phytates and caffeine in cocoa, we limit it for the children. It was still quite tasty with the carob.

 You're welcome. 

The outtakes

I normally post just the cute photos I get and leave the other million on the disc with the hope that I'll find them funny someday. Those pictures you see in portrait studios of a family with smiling, perfectly-posed children? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're drugged or Photoshopped. I don't get nearly as outraged with how difficult it is to get a great picture as I used to. I've just lowered my standards, usually satisfied with a "decent" picture. The more children we add, the more I lower my standard, until I'm getting to the point of being happy if they're all in the same frame. Bonus if no one is crying. I do admit to getting irritated that Judah insists on looking down, putting his hand up to his face, or worse, sneering, just as the baby looks up and smiles and the other children are compliantly standing still and smiling. However, on this day, right before shoe shopping for daddy, the outtakes made me laugh.

Wherein Mercy takes matters into her own hands (and Shiloh is stinkin' adorable):

Wherein both older boys decide to put their hands up and look everywhere but the camera:

Wherein Zion shows us how big he can make his mouth, and Shiloh shows us his red hair:

And we're done here.

Goin' shopping

I suppose it's a bit of a sad commentary that going to the grocery store is a big outing for us, but with doing school and all that goes along with running a home with four busy little living laws of entropy, we really don't go anywhere except church. We go to the grocery store twice a month, and usually have a number of stops to make, so we pack lunch and make a day of it. 

And on this day, they were especially excited because I had promised them sunglasses. Judah had a pair of camouflage sunglasses last fall, but Zion accidentally broke them. He's been begging for a new pair ever since, but since they're seasonal items, I had to wait till they came back in stock. Everyone got a pair. Here's my cool crew :-) 

It won't be like this forever

The children were outside playing this afternoon with Benj while I baked bread, did laundry and tidied. I was standing at the sink and I saw Benj pulling the wagon with Shiloh in it. He was gripping the red sides with his chubby, dimpled hands, his little legs stuck straight out in front of him, and his sunhat bobbing as the wagon jerked over the rough terrain. Zion was kneeling at the sandbox, and even though I couldn't hear him, I could see the shape of his dear little mouth, and I knew he was making his "vroom" sound as he ran his cars. Judah was sulking, and Mercy was fixating on some little project with some flowering branches Benj had congenially cut out of a tree for her. I was suddenly gripped with the knowledge that this won't last forever. Robert Louis Stevenson's poem came in bits to my mind:
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear, he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

I could briefly glimpse myself standing at a kitchen window, washing dishes and staring out into the yard and my little boys aren't there...off doing big-boy things, doing farm chores, growing up. I wanted to engrave upon my heart and mind that image of Zi-Zi with the sun in his curls contentedly running his cars and making loud car sounds. 

I used to think of myself as a wife, homemaker, musician, artist,writer, foodie, bibliophile, etc, but right now, my whole identity is wrapped up in mommy. Cleaning noses and behinds. Cooking vast amounts of nutritious food. Washing mountains of laundry. Worrying that I'm feeding them the right things, worried that I'm choosing the right school curriculum, worrying about...just about everything. As Ann Voskamp says, "keeping babies out of the toilet and out of the road." Picking up toys, breaking up fights. And tired. Mostly just tired. Some days seem like they last for years, and yes, yes, some days I would like to run away (just for a couple hours). But it will end. I will blink my eyes, and my precious babies won't need me to wipe their noses or wash their clothes or cook their meals. And I will be sad, and I think I will even miss getting up in the night for the second or the tenth time. I'm generally not wont to be maudlin, but I have to remind myself of these things lest in the flurry of diapers and someone needing a drink RIGHT NOW, and someone spilling glitter, and someone shut in the pantry, and mommy he shoved me and mommy he's standing on the table and mommy mommy mommymommymommymommy...I forget to notice them and hug them and smell them and laugh. Mostly I forget to laugh. 

And I will get a shower without someone shouting at me and opening the curtain so that water goes all over the floor, then crying when they slip and fall. I will get up and drink my coffee without being asked to read a story before my eyes are even open the whole way, and I will set breakfast on the table without having to clear 37 pieces of paper, 45 markers, 522 legos, 5 sheets of stickers (and a partridge in a pear tree) out of the way. I will be able to sit down to send an email or make a phone call without finding someone eating chalk, swishing in the toilet, or sauntering outside without permission. And while I hope I will relish that phase of my life, I don't want to miss one minute of this stage of my life so I don't have regrets. It won't be like this forever, so I'm hanging on to each moment while I can.