New Year’s Smoothie January 10, 2008

A-Ha! No need for Sacred Harvest readers to spend any money on the latest trends in juicing and supper-smoothie books! I feel like a walking multi-vitamin after coming up with this week’s recipe. Here are the ingredients:

New Year’s Smoothie:

          In the Juicer:

Juice 8 medium size carrots

Ginger (about the size of your thumb)

          In the Blender:

2 cups ginger carrot juice

1 cup cranberries

1 cup blueberries

1 cup raspberries

3 cups rainbow chard

4 oz plain yogurt

Water – if necessary to help it puree. Agave syrup if the unsweetened taste is too tart. You can also add your juice of choice or purchase carrot juice, though that will add variables to the below nutritional content.

Don’t be daunted by the two-step process of juicing before blending. You can always make a big batch of carrot ginger juice and store it in mason jars in the freezer. Just take it out the night before to thaw it for your morning smoothie. You can also add beets to the juicing mix. If you are taking any EFA oil mixes they blend nicely into the smoothie. Also, the thought of chard in a smoothie may seem counter-intuitive, but the greens actually take on a sweet-grass taste when pureed raw, (much like wheat grass). Spinach and chard also work as substitutes.

This is truly a meal on the go, as you can see by the below nutritional content. So if you are looking for a healthy way to cleanse after the holidays this smoothie will give your gut a rest while optimizing nutritional intake. Juicing bypasses the digestive process so it’s great way to maximize nutrient absorption if you’re fighting a winter cold, or if you just want to give your digestive system a break after all of the rich holiday foods. Plus, for less than 600 calories while meeting almost the entire daily requirement of so many macro-nutrients, you can’t go wrong by giving this a try.

New Year’s Smoothie Nutrient Content

Calories: 545

Carbohydrates: 100 g

Protein: 18.5 g

Fat: 4 g

Fiber: 13.5 mg

Sodium: 382 mg

Calcium: 428 mg

Iron: 36.5 mg

Vitamin A: 18,000 iu

Vitamin C: 95 mg

Potassium: 2,600 mg

Magnesium: 540 mg

B-Vitamins – Trace Amounts

A Man and His Monkey January 10, 2008

Just for fun I thought I should post this article from the New York Times. I guess I could classify it under “news of the weird.” It’s about a man who travels internationally with a live monkey under his jacket. Maybe it was just me the day I found it, but it was laugh out loud funny to me!

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/a-monkey-on-the-loose-at-la-guardia/

Rain January 10, 2008

We waited for the rain like children anticipating a snow day. Clouds began to gather as early as Wednesday, and by Thursday the pregnant silence of the low pressure system had us squirming and giddy for the first drops to come. Every morning for three days I woke up, eager to hear the pitter patter of showers on my roof. Every place I went people were talking about how this storm won’t pass us over, and aren’t we ready for a soaking, and the cliche “a storm’s a comin’ ” was on everyone’s minds. So eager, like beggars, for rain this time around; fears of landslides and a re-enactment of the 2005 slides where ten people died and we were locked in with the 101 and the 54 closed for a week, were over-taken with this longing.

You have to understand, we have been teased several times this season by storms changing course at Conception Point, or dissolving out at sea long before they got anywhere near us. My husband made a new guideline of expectation. He now says he won’t believe the rain will come unless the meteorologists proclaim a 90% chance – and then hopefully the storm will make it here.

Further, it’s possible too that as a reader you are in your 8th week of hunkering down in a deluge of storms, and you think I sound like a lunatic rain-junkie. A fool that lost her way after leaving the clouds of the Northwest, and never learned how to adjust to a maddeningly temperate climate. While that’s true to a degree – I do find all this sun makes me a maniacal over-achiever, but you can’t possibly understand how dire it is to be without rain until you walk with it. Or without it, as the case may be.
When your hikes along canyon streams are oppressively hot in November, and you feel the aching thirst of the land as you trudge up crusty, brown creek-beds that look more like the badlands than the lush central coast landscape. When farmers are talking about how the harvest prospects are unknown for next year, and that we still may face ramifications from the random frosts and fires of the past two years. When you have had only half of your average rainfall in two years – these are the things that make you thirst.

And so we have rain; half as much in 3 days as we got in all of 2007. (3.5 inches this weekend versus 7 inches last year). The mountains are greening, the smell of water-rich soil permeates the air, and the risk of fire signs finally say “low.”