micronutrients and more

lately, I’ve been getting into the habit of making good habits. And of all the habits that I’ve been making, one of my favorites has been the habit of creating daily (or almost-daily) fruit and vegetable shakes in the blender.

we go through a lot of fruits and vegetables in this household… it seems that every time I hit our local grocery store I’m buying seven or eight varieties of fruits and vegetables. A lot of these get chopped up and mixed into crock pots or baked dinners, but where the fruits are concerned, a majority of them get put into fruit shakes!

a lot of people will say that blending fruits and vegetables will be diminishing their nutritional value, and that you won’t get as many micronutrients or enzymes out of a blended mixture of fruits and vegetables. But the thing is, I could never sit down and eat a whole bunch of apples, kale, raw carrots, and so forth, without mixing them into a tasty drink. So even if I am not getting the total nutritional value out of the shakes that I’m making, I’m getting a lot more than if the fruits and vegetables were left to rot in the fridge!

in another post I’ll go into detail about some of the beverages that I’ve been making. The secret, I’ve found, is to mix a bunch of good fruits into the mix, a few vegetables (but not too many, as that will overpower the drink), add some frozen raspberries or strawberries (to make the drink more like a frozen smoothie), maybe toss in a small scoop of raw chia seeds, and then sweeten, if necessary, with pure honey. Here in France we get some really good honey made from lavendar which I really enjoy. I highly recommend it!

And now for an interesting aside… the greyish-green apples in the picture above found in between the two pears (you can click on it to make it bigger) are called “Canada Apples”. But they’re not from Canada, and as far as I know I’ve never eaten a Canada Apple (also known as a Reinette, or “Little Queen”) before coming to France. Supposedly these apples originated in England.