Garden, Green Smoothie & Dinner

For my birthday last year, R made me a garden.  It's seen several planting cycles, but the most notable has got to be the tomato plant that was taller than our house!  Fortunately, we now have the garden under control again.

We are growing red leaf lettuce, curly kale, rainbow chard, spinach, habaneros, mint, lemon verbena, thyme, celery, and chives.  I've been going into the garden and picking off the baby green leaves - remember to pick no more than 1/3 of your plant at a time - and using them in my green smoothies.  This green smoothie has an entire grapefruit, banana, coconut oil, apple, a large basket of mixed greens, mint, and water.  I've really been on a kick with mint in my smoothies - yum!

And the finished product

The taste was very tart.  I think it's because I didn't remove all the pith - white stuff - from the grapefruit and because I didn't segment the grapefruit.  I really like tart flavors and drank this immediately, while R was hoping for something sweeter.  For him, I blended some oranges, carrots, and water to make an orange carrot smoothie.  This had a sweeter taste.  If the thick texture isn't your thing, you could strain this so you remove most of the orange and carrot pulp.

For dinner we kept it simple.  I roasted an acorn squash and two garnet yams.  I mashed them with salt and honey.  R made steamed kale with homemade preserved lemons and sauerkraut.  He used Mark Bittman's Quick Preserved Lemons a try.  I had a grilled shitake tofu burger patty that I got from Whole Foods, and R had some salmon.  The kitties were very happy about the salmon :)