Since it’s Thanksgiving let me start off with blessing and gratitude to the Green Smoothie ladies and the Raw Diva’s! I try to practice appreciation and gratitude on a daily basis but Thanksgiving is an especially fun day when you can feel free to express gratitude always and in all ways.  As I made my green smoothie this morning I thought of how grateful I am for my Blendtec that The Raw Divas graciously gifted me with.  I love that thing! As I piled kale into the carafe I thought of how happy I am to have a palate that loves kale and a body that loves the benefits. Then the love for my ingredients just kept flowing, from the raspberries to the maca, to the coconut. Once you start being grateful it is so easy to see beauty in everything around you.  I am a self proclaimed gratitude geek. So I am going to give some examples of how easy it is to be a geek like me.

First off, how excited are we that we have this online community where we can easily access free ideas, opinions and tips about green smoothies?  Green smoothies are such a cheap, creative, fun, and easy way to change your health, habits, diet and life! And look at us, we get to have fun with it all together! No matter where you live or what kind of blender you have we all make it work in our own special ways, yet get to share in a collective of green smoothie fans. I love it!

Today I also want to share some simple, fun facts that I have been picking up on lately. While everyone around you seems to be fighting off the inevitable winter colds, we are already building our immune systems and getting stronger by adding our favorite fruits into our smoothies. Lately I have been making these amazing spinach, pineapple, and raspberry smoothies, only to find later that both pineapple and raspberries are high in vitamin C. I found that the pineapple can benefit you in the same way that orange juice does when we have a cough or cold. Also pineapple contains bromelain, which is an amazing enzyme that helps suppress coughs and loosen mucus. One thing to keep in mind when using pineapples in your smoothies is that the bromelain enzyme will start digesting the proteins in your smoothie, so drink it right away. Raspberries also contain a high amount of manganese, which is an essential trace mineral that helps us in many ways. And don’t forget about those beautiful antioxidants. Another seasonal fruit I have been having fun with is persimmon. They add a nice sweet and mellow taste and help thicken smoothies. Persimmons are a heart healthy food. Apparently they contain higher concentrations of dietary fiber, minerals, antioxidants, and trace minerals in comparison to apples.

These are just a few of the things I have been playing around with lately. Think of the abundance of nutrient dense food that is out there for us to play with.  This holiday, enjoy knowing that you don’t need to have a table filled with turkey, and all the fixings, to be fulfilled. We truly have nutritional abundance in a glass with our green smoothies.

Cheers!

Disa

Tags: antioxidants, bromelain, Disa Jean-Pierre, gratitude, holidays, nutrition, Persimmons, Pineapple, raspberries

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm by Nora and is filed under Green Smoothies, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.