Let’s be clear. I’m not one of those wonderful folks who lives their life around smoothies. I don’t own a special blender or juicer {although sometimes I dream of having one}. I don’t have a pile of fresh ingredients set aside in the fridge to blend & consume every day. And I don’t have a list of powders/proteins/seeds/stuff that I add. I DO however enjoy smoothies. Simple fruit smoothies, with a dash of veg here & there, and lately a drop of oil.
If it is, then there is very little chance that Sam will eat it. He’s always been picky when it comes to vegetables. It’s why we were thrilled to discover that he really liked kale, which we made into chips for dessert and slipped fresh into his morning smoothies. So as the garden was drawing to a close, and we were staring at bushels of broccoli leaves to pull & haul to the compost, we decided to try a little experiment.
With my little helper at my side, we harvested some big bowls full of broccoli leaves, and batch by batch, loaded up the dehydrator. Each batch took about 8.5 hours on a low temperature setting (approximately 115 degrees). Once the leaves were dehydrated, I ran them through a hand blender, removed some of the tougher stem bits, and then ground it all into a finer powder with a good ‘ol mortar & pestle. Some of this could have been simplified if we owned one of those electric spice grinders. It wasn’t too tricky and at the end of it all, we had a lovely bowl of super green powder. That might not seem all that exciting to some folks, but in my mind, it means we now have the ability to sneak some more veggie goodness into Sam’s morning smoothies. I haven’t given it a try yet (we just finished up the last of our kale), but hope to soon.
