A Little Green for Your Breakfast Bowl

Do you ever have one of those days that feels like a slow start?  No matter how much sleep you’ve had or how early you got up and got ready for the day, you just can’t seem to get much done?  Well, 2016 has been a little like that for me… a slow start.  But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about all of you! I recently earned my Culinary Nutrition Expert certification where plant-based, healing, ‘wow’ ingredients and cooking were the focus.  One of my favorite parts of the program was transforming everyday, not-always-healthy foods into powerhouse recipes that give your body powerful nutrients and keep your taste buds happy.  Today I’m sharing one of those culinary creations with you!

Cold, wintery days call for warm, comforting foods. Oatmeal is a breakfast favorite, but can be boring and lack diversity of nutrients, especially protein.  I’ve created a delicious way to bring a bowl of warmth to your breakfast table that will give your body a variety of super foods (think: quinoa, maca, hemp seeds, blueberries) to start your day off right.  It’s my Green Breakfast Bowl and here’s how it goes:

Start with one cup of just cooked, hot oatmeal (I like Bob’s Red Mill gluten free oats). Add in one cup of cooked quinoa (I use leftovers from a previous meal). 

Then, under low heat, (because the idea is to warm the ingredients together, not cook them) add:

½ cup of almond milk

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp maca

1 tsp raw honey

1 tbsp hemp seeds

and ¼ cup organic blueberries (you can use frozen in the off season)

Gently combine until warmed through, then remove from heat and…

mix in ¼ cup fresh, lightly chopped spinach (yes, greens in your oatmeal!).  Place into two serving bowls, top each with a ½ tsp of cacao nibs and serve.

Don’t let the spinach scare you from trying this recipe!  You can’t taste it and it gives you fresh greens, iron, fiber and vitamin A. For those of you brave enough to try it let me know how you liked it!

Have a happy, healthy day!

{Printable Recipe Here – Green Breakfast Bowl}

Making Breakfast a Little Easier

Now that Thanksgiving is over, the holiday season is officially underway.  Busy will define most of our days and for many, skipping meals tends to be a casualty of the crazy schedule.  A little “holiday preparedness” in the kitchen can help you stay nourished and energized for the demands of this season.

I love smoothies for their versatility and ease, but they just can’t be made ahead of time and saved for later. These little smoothie jars are a great way to have an easy breakfast or snack waiting for you, only a quick blend with almond milk is needed before drinking one up.   You can load them up with your favorite smoothie ingredients: everything from fruit to greens and protein powders and nuts.  Fill mason jars with everything except your favorite blending liquid and then store in the freezer. Soon as a smoothie craving hits, simply dump the contents of your mason jar into your blender, add 8-10 ounces of almond milk or coconut water and blend until well combined.  You can even pour it back into your mason jar to drink (depending on your jar size).

Here is one of my favorite combinations... what will yours be?

MASON JAR SMOOTHIE

Place the following ingredients into a mason jar, cover and place into the freezer. When ready to blend, add the contents to your blender with 8-10 ounces of almond milk and blend on high until well combined.

1 sliced banana

½ cup frozen or fresh blueberries

1 cup spinach

1 scoop protein powder

¼ cup cashews

pinch of cinnamon

Enjoy!

Is There A Dragon In Your Smoothie?

Want to add a burst of color and nutrition to your morning smoothie? Then consider adding dragon fruit to your next blender mix.

Dragon Fruit, otherwise known as Pitaya (pronounced pee-ty-uh), is a brightly colored fruit from a climbing cactus plant.  It’s common in southern Asia and is starting to make an appearance here in the U.S.

It is a bright magenta-pink exterior with green leaves that look a bit like dragon scales (thus it’s nickname). The interior can be white, green or magenta, all speckled with tiny seeds.  This wild looking fruit comes with a punch of nutrients, too: vitamin C, high fiber, B-vitamins, magnesium and omega-3’s from the seeds.

If you can find one in your grocery store (or Asian market), simply cut open, remove the peel and eat the speckled flesh.  It has a mild taste similar to kiwi or melon. Another way – and a much easier way! - to get some Pitaya in your life is to add some to your smoothie by buying it in frozen smoothie packs in your grocery store’s frozen fruit section. Look for the PitayaPlus brand (which is raw, organic, non-GMO, and no added sweetener) or ask your store manager if they’ll start to carry it. Here’s a recipe to get you started. Why not try adding a little dragon to your day?

Blend the following ingredients until desired consistency: 

Dragon Fruit Smoothie

8 oz. coconut water

½ cup pitaya or 1 frozen pitaya packet

1 banana

½ cup plain Greek yogurt

large handful of spinach

4 ice cubes

*add more or less coconut water to adjust consistency

Product Review - The Daily Good

Green drinks are all the rage right now and while this trend is basically a healthy one, it’s what’s in the green drink that matters.  There are plenty of posers out there marketing their drinks as nutritious additions to your day when the reality is they aren’t much better than a soda (see my earlier post here). 

I am always on the quest for how to get more greens into my day, especially when I’m away from my kitchen and on the go.  I recently heard about a new product by Aloha called “The Daily Good”.   The Daily Good claims to be the “world’s finest dried green juice”, so I signed up on their website for a free sample to see what it was all about.   A box of five packets arrived with instructions to add the green powder to water, juice or a smoothie. The box touts the benefits of “Keeps Energy Up, Provides Powerful Antioxidants, Boosts Immune System and Detoxifies and Helps Balance Weight".  The packet lists the content’s finest qualities: fiber, vitamin D, non-GMO and no artificial colors, flavors, fillers or sweeteners. Here's what I discovered:

 What’s actually in the packet?

            Dried spirulina*, spinach*, sustainable moringa, peas*, wheatgrass juice*, wild blueberries*, raspberries*, wild harvested coconut water, lemon*, king trumpet mushrooms*, enoki mushrooms*, oyster mushrooms*, Hawaiian yellow ginger* and Hawaiian red alaea salt. (*= organic)

So, I tried it a few different ways, as per the directions:

}1.    Mixed with 10 ounces of water

2.    Blended with my morning smoothie

}3.    Mixed with 8 ounces of orange juice (photo below)

How was it? 

1.    Not awful, but not great - a little “earthy”

2.    Delicious. Barely could taste anything other than the smoothie ingredients.

3.    Really Good. A great way to drink it on the go.

 Bottom line?

            The Daily Good is made up of simple, pure ingredients. No fillers or artificial ingredients.  This product has some great applications:  supplementing a diet that does not get enough greens on daily basis, taking greens with you when you travel or for keeping a packet in your car or purse for those moments you need to infuse some green juice into a day filled with less-than-healthy choices.  At $2.5 per packet, it’s cheaper than a green juice at your local health food store. BUT, on a day to day basis, it is still best to go green with actual produce, fresh, cold-pressed juice or blended greens. As for me?  I’d take a few with me if I was traveling or in a place where I was not sure if I’d get my daily dose of green otherwise.  Nice job, Aloha… I look forward to trying some of your other products.   How about you?

* for healthy recipes and other ways to incorporate The Daily Good into your day, check out their website at https://aloha.com/recipe

New Favorite Grocery Store Find

I’m a green smoothie (and green juice) kind of girl and I like to change the way I go ‘green’ from time to time.  Typically my smoothies get their green from spinach and kale, but from time to time I’ve been known to buy a bunch of collard greens and throw those in, too.  Then, there are days when I’m overdue for a grocery store run so there are no fresh greens on hand.  I usually improvise, but that might no longer be necessary as I’ve found a new favorite item at the grocery store.

You’ll find it in the frozen vegetable section… it’s Earthbound Farm’s Organic Collard Greens.  The bag is full of small pieces of collard greens, frozen in a way that they don’t clump up.  The re-sealable bag makes it easy to grab a handful to add to your smoothies, especially on those mornings when you realize you’re out of fresh kale or spinach. You could easily cook them up to add to hot quinoa or pasta.

Collard Greens are full of goodness! They are a cruciferous vegetable that is high in vitamins A, C, K and minerals like iron, calcium, selenium, manganese and zinc. (Because of its high vitamin K and membership in the cruciferous vegetable family, eat sparingly if you have a thyroid disorder or take blood thinners.)  Add this leafy green to your smoothies, cook and add to eggs or add chopped fresh collards to a salad. Collards help lower cholesterol, fend-off disease, aid in digestion and reduce inflammation overall.  However you enjoy it, know it’s giving you a boost of nutrition in a quick and easy way.

Here’s a quick summer smoothie recipe to get you started:

Add to blender:

 10 oz. Almond Milk

1 cup organic strawberries

½ cup organic raspberries

protein powder

2 TBSP flax seeds

1 cup frozen collard greens

3-4 ice cubes

Blend until well combined.  Enjoy!

It's a Green Time of Year

In honor of March’s National Nutrition Month status, and St. Patrick’s Day, let’s talk about something green. One of my earliest posts talked about the importance of greens for nutrition, but today I’d like to share with you a little info about one green SuperFood in particular  - Spinach. I’ve included a recipe that’s easy to “make and take”, too. Yes, Popeye was right – this dark-green leaf really packs a nutritional punch, helps fight cancer, builds strong muscles, and much, much more! (Keep reading to learn more.)

SuperFood:Spinach

Food science studies continue to show that eating spinach helps improve health and reduce the risk of many health issues, from cancer to memory loss to strokes. Here’s just a short list of what makes Spinach a SuperFood!

• Reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and strokes

• Protects against the occurrence of cancer, including colon, lung, skin, oral, stomach, ovarian, prostate, and breast cancer

• Helps regulate blood pressure

• Builds muscle and strong bones

• Helps prevent memory loss and cognitive decline

• Protects against skin problems such as eczema and psoriasis

• Acts as a natural diuretic and laxative

• Performs as an anti-inflammatory

• Reduces migraines

• Prevents cataracts and macular degeneration

What’s inSpinach?

One of the more exciting recent discoveries about what’s in spinach is the presence of glycoglycerolipids. You may not have heard glycoglycerolipids before because people are just starting to talk about them. Glycoglycerolipids are the key players in plant photosynthesis, and new research shows that they can prevent inflammation and damage in the digestive tract. What else are you getting in a cup of spinach? Here’s how it stacks up by percentage of Daily Values:

Vitamin K 987.2%

Vitamin A 628.8%

Manganese 84%

Folate 65.7%

Magnesium 39.1%

Iron 35.7%

Copper 34.4%

Vitamin B 232.3%

Vitamin B 625.8%

Calcium 24.4%

Potassium 23.9%

Vitamin C 23.5%

Fiber 17.2%

Vitamin B 114.1%

Vitamin B 35.5%

(Source: www.wholefoods.com)  

And here’s the recipe I promised… 

Spicy Chicken Salad (no mayo!)

Ingredients:

Two skinless chicken breasts, baked or poached and chopped.

¼ cup chopped red, yellow or orange pepper

¼ cup chopped celery

½ cup fresh chopped baby spinach leaves

1-2 very ripe avocados, cubed

1 clove fresh minced garlic

1 ½ tsp chipotle or chili powder

Pinch of pepper and sea salt

Directions:

Chop cooled chicken into small, bite-sized pieces and place in large bowl. Add chopped pepper, celery and spinach leaves and minced garlic; mix well with a large fork. Add the cubed avocado; mash the avocado into the chicken and vegetable mixture, stirring and mashing until you have a slightly smooth consistency. Add the chipotle or chili powder, the pepper and sea salt. Mix well. Serve on romaine lettuce leaves, unsalted brown rice cakes or toasted whole-wheat bread. (I lay a few whole spinach leaves on top when I eat it as a sandwich!)

Don’t save the green just for St. Patty’s day… make it an everyday part of your life, just like Popeye. Enjoy!

Good Things Come in Small Packages

Our culture tends to subscribe to a “bigger is better” mentality, but that is not always the case, as some wonderful things come in small packages… things like babies and diamond rings (insert heartfelt “sigh”). I’m not so sure who gets credit for the phrase “good things come in small packages”, but this age-old proverb can mean so much more than something sparkly in a small box, although I must say; I’ll take that kind of small package any day (grin).

But since this blog focuses on whole foods and clean eating, I’m sure you have already figured out that I’m referring to food.  In this case, seeds.  Those who are followers of a paleo diet are big seed eaters and you might even know someone who has eaten seeds to help improve fertility.  These little seeds, some of which I’ll profile below, are often an afterthought when it comes to how they are used… a sprinkle here or there or a few dotted on a hamburger bun, but never much attention past that.  I want to share with you the powerful punch of goodness these small packages can deliver. These are just a few of the seeds you can easily incorporate into your day. How many of these do you eat on a regular basis?

Chia – one of my favorite super foods (and earlier post), these seeds give you fiber, omega 3’s and (just 2 tablespoons) give you as much calcium as ½ cup of milk. Add to your smoothies, morning yogurt or make a healthy pudding with them. You can even make raspberry chia seed jam.

Flax  - another way to boost fiber and help lower cholesterol through the ALA’s (alpha lipolic acid) they deliver.  One ounce of flax seeds has double the omega 3’s of salmon, but they must be ground to be efficiently used by the body. Great sprinkled on salad, in yogurt or mixed into oatmeal. I add them to smoothies any time of the day.

Hemp – don’t let the name scare you, this hemp is not going to give you a high, but it will give you a boost of protein (10 grams in 3 Tablespoons). Hemp is a great vegan source of protein (contains all essential amino acids) and is easily digestible. You can add hemp seeds a smoothie, toss them on a salad or use them in a homemade pesto in place of pine nuts. See below for a quick smoothie with hemp seeds.

Sesame – these tiny pale seeds that come in gold, white and black varieties are high in phytonutrients, a cholesterol lowering and blood pressure lowering compound. And as a bonus, they give you a bit of calcium, too.  Toast them and add them to chicken salad, stir fry’s and even try them as a fish coating.

Sunflower – I am past the age of needing to crack the outer shell and spit it out in order to get to the yummy middle, so I now buy my sunflower seeds raw and shelled. They provide a dose of vitamin E, keep brain cells healthy, and provide selenium, a mineral that provides cancer protection. I add them to salads and to my homemade trail mix.

There are dozens of ways to incorporate these small packages of goodness into your day, but in the meantime, here’s a recipe to get you started… enjoy!

Simple Hemp Seed Smoothie

Blend:

1 ½ cups almond milk 


3 TBSP hemp seeds


1 cup frozen blueberries

½ frozen banana

2 large kale leaves, de-stemmed

3 ice cubes (optional, to thicken, if desired)

Got Greens?

Dark Green

Clothing color trends come and go, but when it comes to good nutrition, one color is always in style… Dark Green.  I’m sure you’ve heard the mantra “eat your greens” since you were a child, and mom was right. Dark leafy greens provide an abdance of nutrients to our cells to keep them healthy and happy and help fight off disease and illness. Just what’s so great about the one food group that kids turn away from without even the smallest bite making it to their mouth? Everything is the short answer. The long answer goes something like this:

Traditionally greens are very high in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, zinc and vitamins A, C, E and K.  They are loaded with fiber, folic acid, chlorophyll, and many other micronutrients and phytochemicals. Some of the possible benefits of consuming dark leafy vegetables are: blood purification, cancer prevention,improved circulation, strengthened immune system, promotion of healthy intestinal flora, improved gall bladder, kidney and liver function.

There is a wide variety of greens to choose from, broccoli being one of the most popular (and full of calcium!). Others to consider include bok choy, napa cabbage, kale, collard greens, watercress, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, arugula and darker leaf lettuces.  Spinach, swiss chard and beet greens are best eaten in moderation as they are high in oxalic acid which inhibits calcium absorption. Choose organic whenever possible, but eating non-organic greens is better than not eating them at all.

Greens strengthen the blood and respiratory system. Leafy greens are high-alkaline foods which may be beneficial to people exposed to higher amounts of pollution in urban areas. Green vegetables will help to replenish our alkaline mineral stores and continue to filter out pollutants. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, green is related to the liver, emotional stability and creativity.

Keep Dark Greens on your plate and you’ll be in style any time of the year.  Your body will thank you.

What's a Chia Seed?

Powerfood Profile:  Chia Seeds

Chia seeds are tiny, nutritional dynamos – in fact, they’re the single richest source of plant-based omega-3 fatty acids you can buy. They are loaded with antioxidants, protein and minerals, plus soluble and insoluble fiber to help keep your digestion moving in the right direction. What’s more, chia seeds have an unusual property – they swell to more than 5 times their weight in liquid, so adding a spoonful or two to meals will help you feel fuller faster. How to eat ‘em? They’re virtually tasteless, so you can drop a spoonful or two into just about anything, including smoothies, sauces, soups and salads. 

My favorite way to eat them?  I like to sprinkle them on my Greek yogurt.