Green Smoothies v.s. Salad

After the whirlwind of family visiting and school volunteering, life is finally back to normal.  To pick up my blog writing again, I want to start with green smoothies, our staple daily drink, as suggested by my younger daughter.
 

As mentioned in my past blog post (http://te-chen.blogspot.com/2013/03/green-smoothies.html), my husband and I have been drinking green smoothies for our breakfast for the past year.  We’ve experienced really good results in our health.  In addition, we exercise more and made changes in our diet—more veggies, less meat, and less processed food.  When our families from Taiwan came visiting us in the summer, they were amazed to see the changes in our appearances, more fit and slim. 

 

For our girls, I also provide them with green smoothies daily or every other day.  I even ventured into packing them salad (without salad dressing) for their lunch this year.  I use Costco’s sprouted pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries to flavor the mix greens or lettuce.  Since store bought salad dressing has so many undesirable ingredients and sometimes too rich to our taste, I find that the saltiness of pumpkin seeds and the sweetness of the cranberries are better alternatives to make the green more palatable.  I also add a little cilantro in my older daughter’s greens since she likes the taste of it.  Last week on our way home, I told them that it was green smoothie day.  My younger daughter groaned and asked, “can I eat it as salad, not green smoothies?”  I told her that the greens in the smoothies aren’t the same as the salad I packed them for their lunch.  There would be kales, carrot tops, ginger roots, celery, chard, kefir, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, and chia seeds.  Some of the greens might be hard to chew and swallow.  It would also take longer to chew than to drink them in smoothies.  She said that she didn’t care and she wanted to try eating them as salad.  So, for the next 15 minutes, I was feeding her leaves/stems of carrot tops, kales, and all the ingredients that I had prepared for the smoothies, with my older one watching amusingly.  I was a little worried that she might gag on the carrot tops or chard but bless her little heart, she chewed and swallowed them all.  After that, I did a little interview with her and here is what she commented,

-kales are disgusting

-carrot tops tasted like metal (parsley is mixed with carrot tops)

-chard is bitter

-ginger is yucky and gingery

- love tomatoes and cucumber

- celery and chia seeds are okay

- she always likes kefir

 

When I asked her if she wanted green smoothies or salad for next time, she answered, “Green smoothies!”

 

Robyn, the green smoothie girl is coming to San Jose, California on 9/18 for her last talk on green smoothies.  She did a similar experiment in the last event, green smoothies vs salad (with the less palatable but more nutritional greens).  She is starting another round of seminar on a new topic next year.  Like I said in the past blog post (http://te-chen.blogspot.com/2013/04/green-smoothie-girl.html), she has amazing stories and give away raffle prizes throughout the evening.  It would be both educational and entertaining.  If you want to attend, please click here to get the tickets (https://sanjosegsg.eventbrite.com/?ref=ebapi).