Smoothie Overload

I know this is boring during our heavy work weeks, but there is still stuff going on. We are kind of in survival mode when we have to work a lot, but that's ok, because we need to see that it works for us whether we have a lot of time to prepare and be creative, or if we need fast preparations so that we can get on with our work.

Cucumbers are coming on in the garden. That is good news. They were really high last winter, and they are still expensive. They never recovered. The more of them we can produce for ourselves, the better. I suppose that is true for any food, but some things will always be more elusive than others. For example, herbs are always high. Speaking of which, the basil is also doing great. We cut some today, and it was so fragrant, it was almost heady.

Darius made raspberry smoothies for breakfast. I know he used greens in there, but I'm not sure which one(s). They were delicious. He went a little overboard, so we made sorbet with the leftovers. The raspberries we got at the market this week were really delectable. I'm not a big fan usually, but these were truly wonderful.

For lunch Alicia made us a delicious salad with some sea vegetables, cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, and that wonderful romaine. We also had some more yummy cucumber salad. We still had ranch dressing. UmUmUm. Thank you, mother nature. I do love salads.

We served the ice cream as our FHE treat, and the children really loved it. I'm glad we have the ice cream maker for them. I don't think it would matter that much to us, but it seems to be important to them. We had enough smoothie left over to make some popsicles, so they can enjoy them tomorrow.

Alicia got the sunnies into the dehydrator today, and we did broccoli tonight. We are not sure how it is going to come out, but we'll see.

I pulled the tomatoes that were drying. I can never resist munching on them as I pack them. The dried sweet peppers were yummy too.

We're going into double time on the juvie. I'm not sure where we'll put it all. We don't have the refrigerator space for it. I guess we'll figure that out as we go along.

Experimenting

We made mint juleeps for breakfast today: 1 cup lemon juice, 1 cup agave nectar. Mix in blender with 1/2 a bunch of mint. Fill blender with ice. After this mixed, add a couple of shots of wheat grass juice. Very nice and healthy too!

I had also put some orange zest in some agave on Monday to "candy" so that I could make a recipe in Everyday Raw called "Creamsicles". They really did taste like the creamsicle ice cream delicacy. I didn't make them into popsicles though. I ran them through the ice cream maker. They are made with 1 1/2 cups coconut meat, 1 cup water, 1/2 cup orange juice, 1/2 cup agave, and 1/2 cup coconut oil. After this is liquified, the candied zest of 6 oranges is stirred in. This can be poured into popsicle molds also.

We also put 1 gallon of raw sunflower seeds in the dehydrator. We started these soaking on Monday (16 cups), and drained them. Then they have been sprouting for about a day and a half.

This is a large amount of seeds, so we divided them up into 3 sprouting trays. For each tray we minced a cup of garlic cloves (in the little bowl of the food processor of course), and mixed this with 2 tablespoons of chili powder and 3 tablespoons of sea salt. After the seeds are coated with this mixture, we divide it up on 3 dehydrator sheets. So the whole batch makes 9 trays, and we have 2 cups leftover to make burger patties tomorrow.

Dinner was leftover Mexican from yesterday. Still fantastic! I also started marinating some dehydrated broccoli (from Walton) to see how it freshen up. I want to see if it will rehydrate sufficiently for the soup or the pasta primavera recipe. I'll post the results tomorrow.

I don't think we posted about the mixture of leftover salsa and cheddar cheeze. I didn't have any, but Darius and Alicia said it was really good. They used some of the ensalada as garnish.