spinach/berry smoothie

New, favorite, easy. Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

1 bag frozen sweet cherries

1 bag frozen berries (blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, or mixed)

1 bag (5 oz) spinach

1 large orange or 2 small, or 4 mandarine, peel and remove seeds

2 Tbsp flax seeds

2 Tbsp sunflower/pumpkin/hemp seeds

vitamins and vitamin D

DHA supplement

1/2-1 cup water

Blend the supplements, seeds, oranges, water, and spinach until smooth. Add the berries and blend again until smooth.

blueberry/cherry "compote"

This is easy and fast and good.

Ingredients:

1/2-1 cup frozen blueberries

1/2-1 cup frozen cherries

0-1/2 oz chopped nuts (walnuts are good, so are cashews, brazil nuts)

1 tsp unsweetened coconut shavings (optional)

Combine in a bowl, heat in the microwave for a minute or two. A good winter treat.

New Year's eve

Today I had fun making healthy "treats" since it's New Year's eve.

I made peanut/banana spread. This is healthier than fresh peanut butter, and I confirmed that it tastes better! (I had some peanut butter yesterday with a banana). I like the consistency better too. Peanut butter is too gooey.

I ate it with an apple (no picture), celery,

lettuce,

and carrot:

My favorite was the lettuce and least favorite was the apple. The apple is good on its own so no need to add this--it drowns out the taste a bit. The celery and carrot and lettuce were great.

At lunchtime, I made blueberry/cherry "compote." Yummy:

I was studying for a nutritional exam, and was reminded how good spinach is for you, so for dinner I had a spinach/berry smoothie.

I also ate a pomelo, and too many brazil nuts. The pomelo is a giant fruit that is a bit sweeter than grapefruit. It was a bit dry but good.

dec. 29 food

Today I had berries for brekky (frozen blueberries), plus too much other fruit and too many cookies.

For lunch I had delicious soup, lettuce & bell pepper, some fruit and carrots, and too many cookies.

For dinner, I had yummy butternut squash apple bake, some berries from the freezer (blueberry and cherry), and some carrots.

I ate too much. burp.

butternut squash/apple bake

This is really a version of Dr. Fuhrman's sweet potato apple bake, but I tried it with butternut squash instead of sweet potato, since we get the squash locally for much of the winter.

Ingredients:

1/2 large or 1 medium butternut squash

2 apples

2/3 cup raw cranberries, fresh or frozen

1/2 cup raisins

2/3 cup orange juice (I used mandarin oranges)

1/2-1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Cut the squash in half lengthwise, and dig out the seeds and stringy stuff. I found scraping it with a knife first frees up the stringy stuff, and then a spoon can remove it. Peel the squash. I recently got what I think is called a t-peeler. This worked great. Here's a picture showing the t-peeler at top left, and the chopped squash:

Next, peel and chop the apples. Combine everything in a baking dish. Cover with foil. Bake for 1 hour, 15 minutes. In the last 15 minutes, add the cinnamon and remove the foil to toast it a bit.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished project. Here's a picture of a version with sweet potatoes instead of squash:

Note on modifications: I recently tried this with beets and squash and didn't like it as much. It's better just with the squash!

Dec. 28 food

Here's a pictoral view of yesterday's meals.

Brekky:

mandarine oranges, apple, kiwi, carrot.

Lunch:

At top left is house-mate's lunch: brussels sprouts, carrots, corn, edamame, ground sunflower seeds. Mine is at right: brussels sprouts, red cabbage drenched in kale fennel soup. Now I really like that soup. It just took getting used to. dessert was one cashew cookie and banana oatmeal cookie each.

Dinner was salad with my favorite sweet pea dressing. Today's version had peas, flaxseeds, mandarine oranges and d'angou pear vinegar. Here's the dressing before blending:

Here's the salad, and the cookies for dessert.

oops, then I had some more cookies.

Fun weekend cooking!

I decided to make some Fuhrman recipes this weekend. His soups tend to be hearty and rich, which sounds perfect for the winter. I decided I want to make the 3 "High Cruciferous Soups" in the Nov. 2004 newsletter (members only, sorry!). So I started yesterday with the Kale fennel soup (recipe here, my post about it here). It was good, but as I said in my post, I think my modifications made it worse than it should have been. So I'll have to try it again sometime.

Then today, to help me resist those awful SAD (Standard American Diet--namely, sugar, refined grains, and chocolate!) treats that not only are unhealthy, but make me feel like crap when I eat them, I decided to make some Fuhrman treats. Even though I didn't think I needed to be such an extremist, well, I think I do after all! I just can't stand how I feel when I eat that stuff, not only moments afterwards with the hyperactivity, but days afterwards with the grogginess. I think I just have to be 100% in the Fuhrman universe so that I feel normal all the time. The chocolate and sugar feels like a strong drug to me now, as does alcohol and caffeine. And if I'm 98% compliant, that's pretty extremist to most people, so why not go all the way to 100%. No one will notice the difference. They'll notice much more if they see me eating SAD food. Okay, sorry to ramble so much there.

So, anyway, to help me in the psychological department where I get jealous when I see everyone eating all those treats, I decided I should probably have some treats from the Fuhrman universe of foods. So today I made cashew cookies and banana oat cookies. I actually wasn't sure I'd like either one but I ended up liking both! I think my taste buds have changed over the years, which is also why I find the SAD treats too sweet and artificial tasting. So I'm not suggesting that SAD eaters will like these, but I'm not making these for SAD eaters. However, I was surprised that house mate, who eats a lot of SAD sweets, liked both batches of cookies. In addition to the cookies, I made a bunch of smoothies for house mate (two batches of 3, or 6 total). I love making the smoothies because I nibble on the various ingredients as I make them. I don't make the smoothies for myself because I prefer the flavor of the individual fruits better, these days anyway. But I do enjoy eating the leftovers from the blender afterwards with the help of the spatula, yum. It's amazing how much you can scrape out of there.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend in the kitchen. I love preparing food. I wish I could do this all the time!