Well today I experimented with the mustard greens I bought a few days back.  Whipped up smoothies using 1 pound 2 ounces of mustard greens with the usual bananas, blueberries, cranberries, and some frozen mango.  First off, it smelled really green.  Like wheat grass juice.  Second, it tasted really green with a hot spicy afterburn. 

No Can Do. 

Three quarts of Mustard Green Smoothie out to the compost bin and I’ll mix up some nice romaine lettuce smoothies later today. 

GV 

So Sunday we drove across the Columbia River into Astoria Oregon to shop in a big chain grocery store.  The produce is quite a bit better then what I can get at the one locally owned grocery in my home town.  I live in a semi- rural beach town and the only thing I miss about living in the big city of Seattle is the produce selection at the Top Foods Grocery.  It was always so beautiful.  I also loved to look at of the exotic produce at the Seattle Uwajimaya store.  I never was a huge fan of the Pike Place Market which is a big tourist attraction.  It’s crowded, noisy, it smells like stinky fish, and parking is a nightmare.  We looked at condos in Bell town at one point, and if we’d moved there I would have shopped at Pike Place, but if you don’t live downtown, it’s much more convenient to shop at the big chains.  But I digress. 

So after washing up my greens on Monday I ended up with 10 bags.  The bags I use are about equivalent in size to your standard gallon zip lock.  I fill them as full as I can with spin dried greens and they generally weigh between 1 and 1 ½ pounds, depending on the type of green.  I generally use a bag a day and I try to vary the greens a bit broaden the nutritional benefits.  We generally get what looks good and it varies from week to week.   So this is what I’ll be eating for greens over a 10 day period and what it will cost. 

4 bunches of red leaf lettuce @ $1.79 = $7.16

2 bunches of green leaf lettuce @ $1.79 = $3.58

1 bunch collard greens $1.49

4 bunches mustard greens @ $1.49 = 5.96

3 bunches kale @ $1.49  = $4.47

6 bunches of romaine lettuce @ $1.79 = $10.74

Total $33.40.  If you figure this as an average for 10 days, then it would cost me around $100. per month for greens.  I find it interesting that the most nutritional greens, collards, mustard, and kale are less expensive then the romaine and leafy lettuce, which have less nutritional value.  We bought their only bunch of collards and all of the kale they had. 

I also bought 7.73 pounds of organic bananas @ $.79/pound for a total of $6.25.  This is not enough to last me for 10 days but I can supplement it with some bananas I’ve got in the freezer.   

Wednesday’s Green Smoothie:

1 pound 7 ounces red & green leaf lettuce

6 cups filtered water

½ cup frozen blueberries

½ cup frozen cranberries

5 small bananas

2 Tablespoons ground flax seeds

This makes three quarts of green smoothie. 

Fitday totals for entire batch of green smoothie:  Calories:  766, Fat 13g 17%, Carb 166g 73%, Protein 19g 11%, Fiber 36 grams. 

Photo Source: http://www.seattleu.edu/scieng/phys/photos/PikePlaceMarketSep2002a.jpg

I’m using FIT to clean my fruits and veggies.  When I go shopping I wash all my greens and pack them up in Evert-Fresh bags.  I also put one paper towel in the bag.  This combo will keep greens (and other produce) amazingly fresh for weeks.  I generally fill up two sinks of water.  Put a cap full of FIT in the first sink.  Let the greens or other produce like grapes/apples/tomatoes/celery float around in it for a few minutes.  Then I transfer the produce to the second sink of clear water to rinse.  For greens, I then spin them in a salad spinner before I bag them up.  I only wash 3 or 4 bunches of greens before changing the water.  This week I’ve washed green and red/green leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, kale, collards, and something new for me, mustard greens.  I do run across an occasional bug.  The leafy lettuce seems to be the most prone to pick up an occasional fruit fly looking thing.  But I only find them floating in the wash water, not the rinse water so I assume I’m getting them cleaned off.  They are natural foods from the earth and since I would expect to find critters if I picked them out of my garden I can’t act all shocked if I find them in greens from the store.  And if I don’t catch every single one, well then, we’ll just call it a source of vitamin B12.  (Smile)

Monday’s green smoothie:

1 ¼ cup fresh squeezed grape juice

1 pound 6 ounces leafy green/red lettuce

3 bananas

½ cup cranberries

½ cup blueberries

2 tablespoons ground flax seeds

5 cups filtered water. 

This makes three quarts of green smoothie. 

Fitday totals for entire smoothie batch:  Calories 814, Fat 13g 15%, Carbs 176g 76%, Protein 19g 10%, Fiber 32g. 

Photo source:  http://kolya.typepad.com/photos/clagett_farm_photos_2005/

Well, we’ve had some wild weather on the Washington Coast so far in November.  Record rainfalls had over a dozen rivers flooding and the governor begging for federal money to clean up the mess.  Sunday night we lost power from a wind storm.  It didn’t come back on until late yesterday afternoon.  We were lucky as they still don’t have power north of us on the peninsula in the town of Ocean Park.  Our cable TV is still out and it looks like the outage fried Mary’s computer.  The power came on and off several times over a period of two or three minutes so we’re thinking some kind of surge.  She’s got some guy coming by the purple cottage today to see if he can’t at least save some of the photos/files off of her hard drive. 

And guess what?  You need electricity to make smoothies!  I believe they have hand cranked blenders but I understand it takes quite a bit of muscle to get it working properly.  So when the power finally came on yesterday I ended up only making one quart of smoothie. 

Monday’s Smoothie:

2 ½ cups filtered water

8 oz kale

1 banana

1 cup frozen peaches

1 tablespoon ground flax seeds. 

This made one quart of smoothie.  The frozen peaches have junk on them to preserve the color.  I won’t buy these again, but I’ll eat up what I have in the freezer. 

Tuesday’s smoothie:

2 cups fresh grape juice

5 cups filtered water

1 pound kale

5 oz romaine lettuce

4 bananas

½ cup frozen cranberries

2 Tablespoons ground flax seeds

This made 3 quarts of smoothie.  I ran the grapes through the healthy juicer.  Yum.

Photo source: http://www.king5.com/pix/weather/index.html?&category_id=&startPage=30&image_id=76107