Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Composting and Smoothies


I have wanted to spiff up our backyard since we bought the house a year ago and I am especially excited about the possibility of composting. Since we live in the city, I was skeptical about whether we could pull this off without inviting every critter in the neighborhood for a nightly feast. I came across a few encouraging articles and websites, one from Urbanite and the other from NYC's Compost Project. I'm sure I've only skimmed the surface of the resources that are out there. I'll keep you posted on this composting/gardening journey. My hope is to have a nice vegetable garden this summer and to put the pulp from my juicer and other organic materials to use, rather than throwing them in the garbage.

So far, so good with the refined/processed sugar detox. I am still eating natural sugars (honey and fruit). Today I made a nice smoothie, loosely based on a recipe from Raw Food Real World by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis. I threw the following ingredients into a blender: a bag of organic tropical fruit medley (frozen Whole Foods Brand), 1 tbls. raw almond butter, 1 tbls. raw honey (Lord Byron's Honey), 1 tsp. Bee Pollen (first time eating this, couldn't taste it in the smoothie!), 1 tsp. organic vanilla extract, 1 cup unsweetened almond milk, pinch of celtic sea salt. It was sooooo good! I also experimented later in the day with Carob powder. I heated up 1 tbls. of Carob, 1 tbls. raw honey, and 1 cup almond milk. Although the powder wouldn't dissolve completely, it was still very good.

I'm feeling better overall. This morning, I awoke naturally at 7:30am and I didn't feel groggy for the first time in weeks! I really hope that this continues. I'm very excited to receive my new dehydrator in the mail! It should be here in a few days. Hopefully I'll be "cooking" (dehydrated food cannot be cooked over 110 degrees or the enzymes will begin to break down in the food) lots of goodies this weekend:)

1 comment:

Allie said...

I've been looking at food dehydrators lately. When we get our farm share in the summer, I've been thinking it might be nice to dehydrate veggies for winter soups. I'd love to hear how you like yours when you get it.