Green Smoothies!

For the first time in my adult life, I am beginning to live without food cravings. I have changed a few things in my life. I only have sweets (other than raw fruit) if I am a guest in another person's home and they serve dessert. I am drinking half the number of my weight in ounces of water each day.. For example, a 100 pound person would drink 50 ounces of water. I am also incorporating much more raw food into my diet.

I am adding finely diced or blended raw greens to many foods. If I am having a salad already, I blend my dressing with a double handful of cilantro, spinach or good green lettuce. Thus, my dressing becomes a good source of nutrition in itself! I basically eat raw for every meal except dinner. Our dinners are simple and usually include legumes and brown rice as well as salsa or a blended raw green dressing. It is easy to make a wonderful topping for almost anything by blending a few tablespoons of your favorite salsa with a packed cup or two of fresh, greens. Tweak the amounts to your liking. Make only as much as you will use at a meal. Don't try to save it for later.

One of the most exciting things I do is to have a green smoothie or two every day. I use my little Magic Bullet blender for all of this. It makes a good serving of smoothie, cleans up in seconds and is easily stowed out of sight. No, This is not a paid endorsement, but I do love my M.B. Anyway, for a green smoothie to be at its best, the greens need to be not only raw, but live. If you can pick them from your own garden, windowsill or sprouter just as you use them, this is best.

This morning, my breakfast consisted of 2 cups of mixed greens out of my pastor's garden, (Thanks Pastor!). I blended these to a slurry with  just enough water to make the blender work. When the greens were blended, I added a whole banana, cut up and a teaspoon of hemp oil. I alternate oils, using hemp oil, olive oil and flaxseed oil. I only use oil in one smoothie per day.

As soon as the smoothie is blended, I drink it down. The micronized particles of greens and fruit are extremely vulnerable to oxidation. Think the browning of a sliced apple to the 10th power. This is not good and defeats the purpose of the smoothie. Therefore do not make more than you will drink in 5 minutes. Your digestive process will stop the process of oxidation. The refrigerator will not.

I hope you will try green smoothies. If you don't like your first combination, try another. Any fruit or mixture of fruits with any live greens. I promise, you will not regret adding this to your nutrition and fitness routine.

Lawana

I Am So Glad I Am Not a Truck Farmer!

When I was growing up in the foothills of the Appalachians, some of my friends' parents were "truck" farmers. That meant that they grew extra vegetables to sell on a truck. Before my time, those trucks sometimes went door to door and were called peddlers. There were also gatherings in all the little towns of the area on Saturday where folks would sell their produce.

When my father was young, share cropping was common. Though there are variations on this theme, it involves some agreement between a person or more likely a family who has no land, farming land that belongs to someone else. The proceeds of the crop are divided between the land owner and the share cropper.



SALAD BED



SAD, COLD, LITTLE SQUASHES

The history books I read as a child carried an idea that sharecropping was one way for destitute people to rise out of their poverty. In my lifetime, it appeared that truck farmers were able to earn money also. So here's my point. My family would have long ago been evicted if I were a sharecropper. Even if you adjust for climate, soil type, etc. My gardening efforts are so pitiable! If I were a truck farmer, a Tonka truck would do for hauling the produce!

As it stands, I am not a truck farmer, nor a sharecropper. I do have hopes of selling a few things at our local farmer's market if the weather and my garden will cooperate. For now though I would be excited to just have enough lettuce to build a salad! Perhaps I would do better at hunting and gathering. If God would just let cilantro, lettuce and spinach grow in the forest, I would be set.

THE LONE TOMATO BLOOM!

As it is, it might be wild greens and berries for our family this year.

Enjoy your gardening and if the Lord blesses, could somebody send me a Jalapeno or maybe a yellow crookneck squash?

PEPPERS? MAYBE.



AT LEAST, THE GARDEN HAS A VIEW!

 Lawana

Temperature at my house this morning at daylight: 50 degrees.

Hand-Me-Down "Rows"

The sun came out today! I think we might have hit 70 degrees F! Jesse and Grace-Marie and I decided to do a little gardening. A good friend and neighbor gave us some of her Topsy Turvey planters this year so we decided to plant some tomatos and some strawberries in them. We are taking quite a risk with the tomatoes as it has been a VERY cold spring. I don't think it went over 45 yesterday. The plan was that I could keep them hanging on the porch at night and bring them in the house if it got too cold. That was before I planted them, filled them with soil and WATERED them. Yikes! They are very heavy.
                                  

We are thrifty , by necessity at our house. Our garden fences, raised bed materials, planters, and even hooks that we hung the Topsy Turveys on were all free. Our potting table is a smashed wheel barrow propped on a little goat trough turned upside down. I am so thankful for all my friends who give me things and let me know if they see something I might need somewhere for the scavenging. Because of this we can garden and afford seeds and a few little hand tools. It is very encouraging to be able to garden even when we don't have much expendable income. I get so excited about the produce anyway, but when it costs us almost nothing, it is an even bigger  blessing!

                                                                            

Here is an example of my husband's upcycling. He put a licence plate "tin roof" on the bluebird house.   

                                                                                
This is a glimpse of my slice of Big Sky country through the scavenged chain link that my husband painstakingly trimmed to the right size, one wire at a time with bolt cutters. What a labor of love. 

                                                                              
This year we have high hopes for our hand-me -down rows. We look forward to fruits from the  freeTopsey Turveys potted in the rescued wheel-less barrow, hanging on the recycled bungee cord hooks, on the upcycled fence in front of the innovative tin roofed bird house under the beautiful gift of a free view of the Rocky Mountains, in the Land of the free. I am so grateful to be able to live where and how I do. I have lived other places and might again, but for now, this place is just about perfect.