Monday, April 19, 2010

Independence Days challenge: hello, green smoothies


(a spot in our herb garden, with lettuce sprouts and comfrey squished in there; will need to rearrange!)

Time again for Sharon's Independence Day's Challenge:

2. Harvest something:
From our garden: Eggs, good king henry, sorrel, lovage, dandelion, sweet cicely, parsley, violets.
From a friend's garden: asparagus, rhubarb, mint, scallions, sorrel.

5. Preparation and storage:
Added 1 more bottle of water to storage.

(I called it lemon balm in past posts, but it turns out to be bee balm. I tend to forget what's in my garden in the winter, and have to re-learn it in the spring!)

7. Eat the food:
I've been serving the kids green popsicles (frozen green smoothies) for two years now, but never really got on the green-smoothie bandwagon for myself. But we're turning over a new leaf here, trying to eat more greens. One problem I've had with smoothies is that when the greens are coming up, I'm just about out of fruit (we're down to a few jars of peaches and pears and have no frozen fruit at all). But I made a smoothie this week using an apple (local, from the co-op), grape juice (our last jar), good king henry, sorrel, lovage, dandelion, sweet cicely, parsley, and violets. It was good! We all drank a glass with dinner, and Lucy was practically licking the glass to get the last drops (admittedly, there is sugar in that grape juice...). A good start, I think. Our greens supply is still low; I used up all I thought I could pick for that one glass each. But there will be more to come. (Edit, later in the week: I made another: grape juice, canned peaches, and all the same greens. Yummy!)
We're getting really low on canned and frozen fruits and veggies; can't wait for the farmer's market to open! Used up the last garlic this week, and have been relying on our small supply of ramps for garlicy flavor. We have lots of frozen red peppers, so we've used those in a frittata (lots of eggs right now!) and in a "lentil enchilada" recipe (yummy, though not a bit like enchiladas). We were lucky to have a meal from a friend's garden today: spaghetti with sauteed scallions and asparagus, followed by rhubarb cuppa-cuppa-cuppa.
...
Today...a long walk around town with mama:

2 comments:

Kristen's Raw said...

Yay for green smoothies, green popsicles, and all things green. :)

Cheers,
Kristen

Ruby said...

I am always so impressed with people who really and truely do eat locally/seasonally/oragnically/etc. with dedication . I know all the reasons, I believe them, but I am not so dedicated as to wait until June to buy fresh food from the farmer's mkt, here!
Can't wait to move home to NOLa where I can be my lazy self and be rewarded with year-round farmer's mkts and fresh local seafood!