extra ingredients for green smoothies [part 3 of 7]

On to more green smoothie ingredients!

Lemon peel

Lemon peel is another ingredient I add almost daily.   I often buy a large bag of lemons at Costco, or I bring them home from California or Arizona when I visit there.   I freeze the lemon juice in ice cube trays for use in guacamole, raw desserts, and homemade salad dressings.   (Many recipes are found in Ch. 3 and 11 of 12 Steps to Whole Foods on GreenSmoothieGirl.com.)   But I don’t throw the lemon peels away!   I cut them in eighths (having washed the lemons well, first) and freeze them.   Every day I get a piece of lemon peel out of the freezer and toss it in my smoothie.   It’s a bit bitter, so it’s best when stevia or raw, organic is added to the mix to offset the bitter.

With its potent flavanoids, lemon peel has been linked by research to preventing and killing skin cancers.   As a teenager and young adult, I laid out in the sun for hours, nearly daily, from April to October.   I was always brown, but only after burning many times.   I’m more careful now, but still love the sun and never use sunscreen.   The only reason I can explain why I look younger than I am and have no skin cancer, despite being a fair-skinned redhead, is my excellent nutrition and near-daily use of lemon peel!

Sprouts

Sprouts are such an easy thing to grow, and most people don’t eat them at all.   They are living things, and they are enzyme packed little powerhouses.   When the seed, nut, or legume sprouts, all the enzyme potential is unlocked to go into that burst of energy that becomes a plant.   You have the opportunity, at that unparalleled nutritional level, to steal that nutrition for yourself.   Sprouts have the capacity to dramatically reduce your reliance on the body’s need to manufacture enzymes and consequently steal from metabolic processes.   When you eat them, you are oxygenating your body–think of eating sprouts as the very opposite of eating sugar and other toxic foods that make your body a host for all kinds of immediate and future problems.

They’re great on sandwiches, and I add them to granola I serve my children every morning.   But many people have a hard time finding ways to sneak them into the diet, and blending them into a smoothie is easy and painless.   Just add them as part of the greens portion of the recipe.  

I would not use sprouted nuts or large seeds like pumpkin and sunflower in green smoothies (unless you’re using “greened” sunflower sprouts–when the seed is grown into greens).   I would stick to the smaller seeds like clover, alfalfa, and fenugreek for green smoothie ingredients.

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