Yummy Aloe Vera Smoothie

This may look a bit pale, but it's bursting with flavors........
yummmyyyyyyy....... I could drink this everyday....



So I have a cantaloupe that's a bit too ripe... I know... I forgot about it
but it was soooooo very sweetttt.....

Okay....
I use :
- a very sweet Cantaloupe - around 1 cup ? I never measure anything ;p
- 2 passionfruit
- freshly squeezed lemon juice from half a lemon
- a big aloe vera

mix the cantaloupe, 2 passiofruits and half a lemon juice in a blender
add the aloe vera later

done !!!
easy....
It's sweet and sour with a crunch... perfect
those oreo like black dots are actually passion fruit seeds.... *crunch crunch*
If you prefer a smooth smoothie, you may want to strain the passionfruit seeds first.

Another Aloe Vera juice

So I made another Aloe Vera juice
yupp... that's one big aloe vera
peel and rinse to clear the yellow sap.



Blend everything first,
then lastly, add the freshly cut aloe vera chunks.
I read somewhere.... I forgot where.....that it's best not to blend aloe vera for too long in the machine, so that the polysaccharides chain doesn't get broken down too much
or something like that :)
will try to find that page.

I've always known that Aloe is good for you, but only as a hair growth "serum"
when I was a kid, I sometimes peel and use the aloe vera meat to rub on my scalp because they say it's good to promote hairgrowth.
But I never actually eaten or drunk the Aloe Vera raw.
It actually turn out pretty good.... sometimes not very tasty if I put too much of the healthy green :) but drinkable and it's sooooo good for you, lots of live enzymes :)


So here's the result, the color's not very good due to the red+brown from the watermelon+seed mixed with the greens from parsley, but it's mildly sweet.

Below is a really nice baby pink color which I just love to stare at :)
the top is frothy, blending aloe makes frothy smoothie
It's aloe + banana + strawberries
Nice :)


I just made another one of just aloe vera and melon
and it was this cool light green color.
yummyyy :)

CocoNutty Mango smoothie

I got hungry just now...
I know it's already 10 pm, but if I don't eat now I won't be able to sleep ;)

So :
1/3 of a small cucumber (I keep wanting to add this in)
1/2 leftover orange
1/2 mango
1 banana
blend
I wanted to add fresh aloe vera but the plant is outside and it's dark so I got scared ;p
This taste super good !!!!!!
You can just stop here and enjoy
it's sweet soury fresh :)

but, I added :
1 spoonful of organic golden flax seed (ground first)
and a tad bit too much of virgin coconut oil
I didn't use a spoon and just pour out of the bottle, maybe around 2 spoonful....


I know, cool glass right ? ;p
and see all the ground flax at the bottom of the glass ?

Time to mix


Now it taste coconutty sweet soury fresh smoothie :)

it's kinda eating a coconut biscuit blended in a sweet soury smoothie...
know what I mean ?
No ?
well then, you'll just have to purposely accidently pour in too much of the virgin coconut oil ;p
or maybe not :)
Enjoy



I have yet to know how to identify a good virgin coconut oil
Organic ones aren't available, but I suppose nobody really use pesticides for coconuts in Asia, they just grow really well here, but I don't know for certain, I sure do hope that mine is naturally organic :) and I hope my virgin coconut oil is a good one though, because it mildly smell like coconut, but I'll try another brand after this to compare.

How Do You Identify a Good Quality Coconut Oil?
http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/coconut7.php

While I was writing this....
I was watching this :)
Surprises inside.... enjoy ;D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xui7x_KF7bY

Green Smoothie with Aloe vera

I have aloe vera plants growing very nicely.
It's potted plant aloe and nobody even takes care of them, they just grow !

So... Today I made a smoothie with aloe
Also... I read that it's best to put aloe last in the blender as to not to break down the polysaccharide chain, besides, they get blended so easily n fast anyway.


Ingredients :
- Celery
- 2 Okras
- 1/4 of Cucumber (I just felt like adding it in)
- 1 Aloe vera (peel first)
- Mint leaves
- 1 Banana
- Watermelon, with seed

Put everything in the blender and blend (remember, add the aloe vera last)


After a quick taste, I decided to add half an orange
(sorry blurry pic)


Here it is, Smoothie with Aloe (and 2 okras)

Not the prettiest color, is it ? :)
But it taste quite good,
I make sure that the smoothies I make consist of raw green vegetables combined with nice tasting fruits, so it's easier for me to gobble down lots of raw veggies ;)

Before this, I couldn't eat raw aloe because I'd just slice the aloe meat into cubes and it was too slimy to chew and swallow.
People usually boil the cubed aloe meat to remove the slime and add sugar water and eat it as dessert, but I want raw aloe !!
Blending just raw aloe ends up in a slimy goo which I can't drink as well.
But blending aloe with other ingredients makes it easy to drink, in fact I can't even tell that there's slimy stuff in my green smoothie.
btw, Okra is also slimy....but there was no slimey goo in my green smoothie :)

Lemony smoothie

I can't believe something this dark-green and thick can taste so lemony and mildly sweet :)

- 1 ripe banana
- 4 dates
- glistening vanilla beans from 1 vanilla pod (boiled with little water and added to the juice, but I still can't detect the smell)
- 1 Organic Tomato
- 1/3 of fresh lemon juice
Two handsful of these mixed together :
- Gynura Procumbens - which taste great in salad, kinda like a mild basil.
and has a lot of beneficial healing properties..... Go look em up.
- Organic spinach
- Organic parsley
- Romaine Lettuce

No wonder I heard some clunking sound in the blender, One of the date's seed fell inside the blender.
Amazing how it didn't get crushed at all......

Newbie to Green Smoothie

I've recently started making green smoothie with my modest glass blender.
I've never mixed fruits and greens on a blender before, I've always thought of a smoothie as strictly fruits only concoction.
and Nope... I don't have the super powerful blender like Blendtec or Vita-mix, because the Blendtec/Vita-mix that are available here are the commercial ones which cost US$628-661, which is around US$200 more expensive than the home consumer one.
Normal blender cost around US$50 and that's a good brand.
So I'm not planning to get Blendtec / Vita-mix just yet, although they remain in my wishlist.

I can't use my normal blender to smoothly blend carrots though, last time I did that, it almost broke my blender, almost.... *phew*
I still use my centrifugal juicer for carrots, beets, etc
Although I'm gonna try to take the carrot pulp from my juicer and put it in my blender to see if it can be blended out smoothly to drink.

So.....
The smoothies turn out great !!!!!
Advantages :
They're easy and fast to make.
They make me drink my raw greens easily (I get all the fibres)
They make me drink my ground flax seed easily (I don't really enjoy ground flax on my salad)
The blender is way easier to clean and wash than my juicer.
and most of all
They taste like desserts !!!!!!! Yuuummmmmmmmmmm !!!!
I'm spoiled with smoothies, it makes me "lazy" to chew my vegs now. :)


This one is my green smoothie in a 0.5 litre glass.
(I made too much, it made me a bit too full, but so good though)
I put in :
- a handful of romaine lettuce & green spinach
- half a cucumber
- 1 banana,
- 3 dates,
- vanilla beans from half a vanilla pod (can't seem to smell the vanilla),
- half a spoonful of ground flax seed (ground it first using the dry spice blender)
- coconut water
- did I put mango in ? I can't seem to remember ;)

I prefer not to use water in my smoothie, just coz I don't want to bland the taste.
Last time I used watermelon and I squeezed the water out of the watermelon into the blender, yes with my barehand, I am that strong ;p
or I'd squeeze in lemon juice. and any other fruit that's water-y.

and I don't add ice cubes in my blender, if I find my ready-to-drink smoothie not cold enough, I simply add some ice cubes and stir and drink.

Since my blender is a normal modest blender,
it doesn't really blend brocollis that well,
Last time I added brocollis, okra, ground flax, raw almond and banana and watermelon.
But there was too much greens than the sweet fruits, so it turned out quite yucky and brittle-y
But I gulped the whole thing anyway ;p
Oh well, I'm still experimenting

I'd like to try Chia, Hemp, super green food powder, etc, but they're just not available here. Shipping them would be costly and I don't know whether the shipping condition & duration will make the products go bad or not.

Anyway.....
Here's what I do, for now :
- I "chew" my smoothie (I don't use straw to drink my smoothie)
I don't use a straw to drink my smoothie, because I'm worried that I'll be "drinking" the smoothie all too fast without "chewing" it first.
I mean, with smoothies, it's not really chewing, but since when you eat normal food, you need to properly chew the food so they mix well with the saliva where enzymes interact and it's beneficial for healthy digestion, so I figure I need to "chew" my smoothie instead of drinking it right away.
Yes you can also sip slowly with your straw and "chew" before drinking your smoothie.
But since I don't have a glass straw, I use my spoon to "chew" and drink my smoothie :)
It's fun, it's like melted ice cream with each spoonful.


- I use straw for :
My regular carrot & beet juice.
I also sometimes drink warm lemon water.
(it was every morning last year, it's good for your health)
Lemon, especially, is very alkaline inside our body but it can be very acidic to your teeth enamel and it's better that it doesn't stay in contact with your teeth for long periods of time.

And for that reason, I used to use a plastic straw (bubble tea straw) to drink my lemon water / juice and since I don't want to throw the straw out after every use, I wash it with soap water and a tiny brush that goes inside the straw.
But I haven't been using it lately, well because it's plastic.
Now I just drink it from the glass.
I may have to eventually purchase a glass straw, but I'm still afraid they'll arrive broken since they have to be shipped from overseas. Oh I'll figure something out :)

Here comes the Question no. 1 :
I read that raw foodist may have bad teeth because the enzymes from the raw greens/fruits may harm the teeth's enamel or something like that.
Notice when you're cutting up some types of vegs, they have a sticky sap thingy ? and cooking the vegs will eliminate this sap.
Maybe the enzyme in the veg's sap is causing the teeth to go "bad".
Also the sugar from the fruits and dried fruits.
Some people say it's better to use a straw when drinking juice/smoothie so the juice doesn't really get in that much contact with the teeth.

So in the long term, I don't know Whether it's better to "chew" the smoothie and let it interact with saliva for better food absorption and digestion or Whether to use a straw and swallow straight away so you have a better teeth ?

But I suppose your teeth won't be not any worse than the typical American diet of sugary cakes, desserts, etc, right ?
I think you're safe as long as you eat more greens than sugary fruits, and not overeat on acid fruits, dried fruits and dehydrated stuff.
And if you rinse your mouth, floss and brush your teeth and you'll be fine.

Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences :)

I also find these articles that kinda calms me down on the whole bad teeth thing :
The Raw Divas Blog titled "The Raw Food Diet isn't bad for your teeth"
http://therawdivas.com/blog/?p=156
Frederic Patenaude Blog titled "Why Raw-Foodists Have Problems With Their Teeth How to avoid dental decay, gum disease and erosion for good."
http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/dentalhealth.html

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Question no.2 :
I read in a book somewhere that it's better to juice not more than 3 types of fruits for better absorption in our body.
I suppose it applies to smoothies as well.
But we all tend to put like 7 (sometimes even more) ingredients into the blender.
I read a lot of health improvement in people who drink a mix of a lot of vegs+fruit smoothies and it's been proven great for our health so far

So Do the "Don't juice more than 3 types of fruit" really apply ?
What do you think ????
I suppose mixing vegetables is fine.
For example, salad consist of so many different types of vegs and the rainbow combination is good for us.

I think if it works, it works, it's that simple.
If blending 10 ingredients keep you healthy, then I suppose it's good for you, and you can always only mix 3 types of fruits/vegs when your running short on fruits n vegs :)

What I'm not sure is mixing the vegetables and the fruits, Are there any rules for that ?

I seem to keep on answering my own questions, except for the last one though :)

Woww..... this has been a long post :)
Thanx for reading :D