Green Smoothies

I was thinking of buying a juicer so I could drink my vegetables. I even had a juicer all picked out and ready to buy. Then I came across Tera Warner's Green Smoothie Challenge. Instead of juicing her veggies, Tera just blends them up into what she affectionately calls "lawn mower pulp". No expensive, messy juicer required. And by blending your veggies instead of juicing, you keep all that wonderful fiber!

For green smoothie newbies, Tara recommends the following green concoction:

Green Smoothie for Newbies

1 cup water
1 banana
1 handful spinach

Add water and banana to blender and blend until smooth. Add in spinach and blend together.

Instead of water, I had some Green Goodness juicer from Bolthouse Farms. It added a bit of extra sweetness and made the spinach much more palatable.

My next green smoothie experiment included even more greens:

Orange, Red and Green All Over

1/2 cup carrot juice (or carrot/fruit blend)
1/2 cup water
2-3 strawberries
1 handful spinach leaves
1 stalk celery, roughly chopped
1 handful fresh parsley leaves

Add liquid and strawberries to blender and mix well. Add in spinach, parsley and celery and blend on high until everything is pulverized and juicy green!

Next up I'm going to try kale. I'm not sure how that one will go but I'm willing to try it out!

Preserve the Bounty - Week 4 Wrap Up

Week four of the Preserve the Bounty Challenge is my favourite so far, and the easiest. Preserving in alcohol! Who doesn't love a little drunken fruit?

My goals for this challenge:

- use fresh, local fruit from the Farmer's Market
- use alcohol I already have in my liquor cabinet (to save $)
- not use vodka (that's too easy!)


For my first creation, I improvised Jenny's recipe for Vanilla Rum Plums. I used a mix of small local black plums from Osoyoos and larger black plums from California. A bit of a cheat but they were in my fridge for some reason, so I figured I would use them up. I used a 1 litre canning jar. I had to cut the larger Californian plums into quarters (around the pit) to fit into the jar. The local plums I just pricked with a fork and popped them into the jar whole. Then I added 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon clear vanilla and enough Vanilla flavoured rum to cover all the fruit and fill the jar. As luck would have it, I had EXACTLY enough rum left in the bottle to fill the jar, right down to the last drop!


Next I preserved fresh, local blueberries in Peach Schanpps! This time I used a 500ml canning jar. I rinsed the blueberries and picked through them to remove stems, leaves and any unripe ones. I filled the jar with blueberries (just under 2 cups), added 1/4 cup of sugar and topped it all off with enough Peach Schnapps to cover the fruit and fill the jar.


My last creation, as posted the other day, cherries in Brandy! I couldn't decide if I should leave the stems/pitts intact and use the cherries for garnish or pitt and de-stem them for use in desserts and baking. I decided to do both. I made one 500ml jar of de-stemmed and pitted cherries and one 500ml with stems and pitts. The latter will be used in drinks and on top of desserts. The former will be used inside tarts, pies and other baking/cooking applications. I followed the same process as above. Cherries, 1/4 cup sugar per jar, alcohol to fill. For all my creations I chose not to simmer the alcohol with the sugar. I didn't want to jeopardize the alcohol content by heating it. Instead I used the good old "shake" method - put the fruit, sugar and liquid in a jar, secure tightly and shake your ass off! I continued to shake the jars every couple hours, just to ensure all the sugar was dissolved, then I stored my jars in the bottom of a cupboard. Every couple days I go and shake them up again.

Now I have to wait at least a month before I test my creations. I'm looking forward to Vanilla Rum Plums over ice cream. And Blueberry Peach Schanpps Martinis. I'm also thinking of trying out some Cherry Brandy Tarts. Oh the fun I will have this fall!

Preserve the Bounty - Week 3 Wrap Up

Retro poster from Google Images.

I started the Preserve the Bounty Challenge in week three so I had a bit of catching up to do.

I skipped the week one challenge as I wasn't sure about fermenting and I'm still not. Sauerkraut and Kimchi? No thanks. I'm thinking about trying preserved lemons, but as of right now I don't see the point in doing it for this particular challenge, since lemons aren't local to my region. (The idea is to preserve your local produce for use in winter months when it won't be available. Since lemons aren't local - I have to buy them no matter what time of year it is.)

Week two's challenge involved preserving things in oil or fat. I caught up on this one by making four Compound Butters using my garden herbs - 2 1/2 cups of butter total. I also canned roasted red peppers in a mixture of oil and vinegar. I can tell you, I won't be canning roasted red peppers any time soon. Very time consuming for very little reward. I got one 500ml jar for my troubles.


With that out of the way I set to work on the challenge for week three - preserving in vinegar. My first attempt was Pickled Ginger. I ended up with two 500ml jars. I followed that up with Grandma's Pickles in a Bucket and was rewarded with two 1L jars. I later made two more 500ml jars. After a visit to the farmer's market, things really got out of control. Using 500ml jars, I ended up with two jars of dill pickles, one jar of pickled dill carrots, one jar of pickled dills AND carrots, one jar of pickled sweet peppers and one jar of sweet pickled carrots. I also go one 1L jar of pickled shallot vinegar! I should admit that I did cheat on this challenge and used the water bath canning method to boil many of the pickled products, just to make them shelf stable. I don't have room in my fridge for this many refrigerator pickle products! The Pickled Garlic and Grandma's Pickles in a Bucket were made without heat processing and are stored in the fridge.

Unrelated to this weeks challenge, I also canned fresh tomatoes, similar to what my Grandma makes. There is nothing better than tomatoes canned in water for making fresh tomato sauce in the winter. I used this recipe. It was incredibly easy. I got two one litre jars out of my tomato bounty (about 12-14 large tomatoes). I might make more next week after I pick up more tomatoes at the farmer's market. Again, I cannot express how awesome fresh canned tomatoes are in homemade tomato sauce. I even have a recipe using them!

Back to pickling... after making Ricardo's Beet Cakes, I popped the left over beets into a jar and pickled them too! One 500ml jar of sweet pickled beets. I can't wait to eat those! The only thing I didn't pickle this week were my farmer's market blueberries and cherries, but don't think I didn't consider it! Instead of pickling cherries, I canned some in a light sugar syrup (I followed this method). Another little canning bonus to go along with the tomatoes!










Preserved for Week 3:
- Pickled Garlic 2x500ml = 1 litre (not pictured)
- Pickles in a Bucked 2x1L and 2x500ml = 3 litres
- Dill Pickles 2x500ml = 1 litre
- Dill Carrots 2x500ml = 1 litre
- Pickled Sweet Peppers = 500ml
- Pickled Sweet Carrots = 500ml
- Pickled Shallots = 1L
- Pickled Sweet Beets = 500ml
Total Preserved: 8.5 litres
Bonus: 2 litres Canned Tomatoes and 1.5 litres canned cherries!

Preserve the Bounty Challenge

While surfing the net the other day, I came across The Nourished Kitchen - Preserve the Bounty Challenge. I decided to sign up. What better way to continue healthy, local, wholesome eating than by preserving the summer harvest?

In the month of August. we’re setting aside our pressure canners and we’ll be preserving the bounty of the summer season naturally while optimizing the nutrition of the foods we put up for winter. Over the course of 5 weeks we’ll cover sun-drying, oil curing, freezing, fermentation and salt-curing – traditional techniques that optimize nutrition and don’t heat up the kitchen like canning.

I missed week one (fermentation) and week two (preserving in oil & fat), but I signed up just in time to receive instructions for week three (preserving in vinegar). Sometime during the month or at the end of the challenge I will go back and try the challenges from weeks one and two.

For now - preserving in vinegar. Well, that's easy. Pickled green beans, pickled carrots, picked garlic, pickled beets. I make fabulous spicy pickled dill beans. And I might try my hand at pickled peppers. You name it - If it's available at the market tomorrow, I'm going to pickle it. The catch is I can't boil the finished product to ensure a tight, secure seal on the jars. That's no problem though. Vinegar and salt are fabulous preservatives and as long as I store my goods in the refrigerator, I will have no problems with bacteria or other nasties.

In other food preserving news, I bought a food dehydrator. My plan is to dry most of the herbs in my garden (basil, parsley, lemon basil, rosemary, thyme, chives), make my own dehydrated minced onion and garlic and dry some blueberries and strawberries for use in cereal and baking in the winter. I may even try my hand at fruit leathers and jerky!

(As it turns out, drying and dehydrating was the challenge for week 5! And instead of salt curing, we preserved with alcohol in week four.)

Do you have any experience with preserving in vinegar or with food dehydrators?