The Organic Climber – Vegetarian running, cycling, swimming, rock climbing and raw foods.

Rainbow chard, green, nectarine, mango banana smoothie. What a name for a smoothie eh?  I made this delicious bad boy after an impromptu trip to Whole Foods after exchangeable my shoes at Luke’s Locker. I needed some agave nectar and it just so happened, there was a Whole Foods right down the road. I ended up buying way more stuff than I intended to buy. Really the only thing I needed was the agave, but walked out with a canvas bag full of other stuff including a couple mangoes and some rainbow chard. I have used rainbow chard in past smoothies – it’s one of my favorite greens.

I have a feeling I am going to start eating a lot more mangoes since my roommate purchased the Titan peeler. This “As Seen on TV” kitchen utensil is seriously quite amazing! It only takes me seconds to peel one mango as opposed to minutes with a standard potato peeler. This will make dehydrating mangoes way easier too.

Anyway, without further or do, here is the Rainbow Green Monster Smoothie. I just renamed it on the spot; sounds much better huh?

The Recipe

• I ripe mango
• 1 ripe nectarine
• 1 ripe banana
• 2-4 TBSP of agave nectar
• 6 cubes of ice
• 3/4 – 1 cup of almond milk
• 1 giant rainbow chard leaf

Directions: blend that stuff up

RAW Food, Recipes, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
agave nectar, banana, green, mango, nectarine, rainbow chard, smoothie, titan peeler, whole foods
1 comment

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First of all, I apologize for not bringing you Smoothie Tuesday yesterday. The Holiday’s have me all out of whack. Even though I was at home all evening, I was too busy relaxing and enjoying the third snow of the winter, which is very unusual for North Texas.

Today I thought I would share you my tips for staying green and reducing your carbon footprint. These green tips are all things I practice myself or will be implementing in the very near future. Feel free to comment and add your own green tips.

• Use less paper products. Did you really need to print out that email? What about that article online you wanted to read? Think twice about printing documents from your computer. Another way of saving paper that I plan on implementing in the new year is using less paper towels. I plan on buying several cheap cloth towels to use instead of paper towels. This will also save money in the long run.
  

  Canvas bag from greendaily.com

• Stop using plastic grocery store bags. It is now a pet peeve of mine when a store clerk bags up my one or two items I can easily carry out with my own two hands. I almost always catch this now and let them know I don’t need a bag. Canvas bags are great to use when you have a larger load to haul out of the store. I have collected a few over the past year and keep them in my car so I always have them when I go to the store.
• Recycle produce bags. One can not help but use the plastic bags provided in the produce department to carry their lot of apples or bulk salad greens, but there is no reason you have to take a new bag every single time. I save as many of them I can and reuse them until they form holes in the bottom. They also make small reusable canvas bags for produce as well. The only thing I don’t like about them is they weigh more than a plastic bag and you will pay more for your produce or bulk food item.
• Reuse those glass jars and plastic containers. No need to immediately toss every glass jar and container you use. Rinse out those jars and salad containers and reuse them. I have lots of jars saved that I use as smoothie glasses and holding salad dressings. I reuse salad containers for storing things on camping trips. They are very versatile. A friend of mine told me a story about a house she visited and the family only had recycled glass jars to serve drinks in – not a single store bought glass existed in the home.
• Paperless Billing – This goes right along with using less paper products. Most credit card companies offer paperless billing now. I also know that AT&T offers this to cell phone customers. Almost all my bills are electronic now. This is not only better for me in that it reduces my carbon footprint, but I’m less likely to forget to pay the bill since I don’t pay a lot of attention to the mailbox these days.
  

  Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb

• Use compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) in your home. Almost every single light fixture in my house has a compact fluorescent bulb in it, and once the incandescent bulbs go out they will be replaced with a CFL. These bulbs really do cut down on your energy bill, and they last A LOT longer than your standard light bulb.
• Turn out the lights. As a kid my parents were constantly yelling at me to turn out the light in my room when I wasn’t in it. Granted, the main reason was for saving money on the utility bill, having lights turned off in rooms that are not in use reduces your carbon footprint. I am still guilty of leaving them on from time-to-time, but I always strive to follow this rule.
• Wash all your clothing in cold water. For years now I have been using only cold water to wash my clothing – yes, even my whites. This not only saves on your heating bill, but also your water bill because you can now wash your whites and colors at the same time.
• Take a four minute shower. I’m not very good sticking to this one myself, but some friends of mine actually have an hourglass type timer in their shower timed for four minutes. It doesn’t seem like long enough, but it actually is. When sticking to the 4 minute shower limit I have time to soap up really well, wash my hair rinse and still have about a minute left to just enjoy the water pouring over me.
• Recycle. This one is the most obvious, and almost everybody does it these days. When I first started recycling my main reason was to save money. I was throwing large bulky items into the recycle bin and I was buying less trash bags. But later in life as I became more green my reasons for recycling have changed. I also save lots of cardboard boxes as well. I do this so I have boxes to ship things in and store items in future moves.
  

  Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap

• Use environmentally friendly soaps. My favorite is Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap. I really love the peppermint scented option. These soaps are all natural, good for your skin and environmentally friendly. I also use a “green” laundry detergent as well. About the only soap I don’t use something environmentally friendly for is dish soap, just because I have found them highly ineffective.
• Go Vegetarian. Not many people draw the connection, but going vegetarian reduces your carbon footprint dramatically. By not eating meat you are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases and helping combat global warming. By eliminating (or reducing) meat from your diet you are being a good steward of the environment.

Uncategorized by OrganicClimber
carbon, enegy, footprint, global warming, green, greenhouse gases, re-use, recycle, recycling, reuse, savings, tips
3 comments

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This is one of my all-time favorite smoothie recipes. It was one that I made countless times when I first started eating raw foods. This simple green smoothie is brightly colored and is sweet and tasty to boot. All you need is spinach, bananas and water. It’s that simple! Alternatively you can use almond or hemp seed milk to add to the flavor and provide additional nutrients.

The Recipe

• 2 hand fulls of spinach
• 2 bananas
• 6 ice cubes (or omit if your bananas are frozen)
• 1 cup of water or your favorite “milk”
• 2 TBSP of hemp seed protein (totally optional)

Directions: Throw it all in a blender and WHIRRRRR

If you want to spice it up even more use a chocolate greens powder such as Amazing Grass, or just use cacao powder. One of my favorite things about this drink is how much it freaks people out when they say it. Their reaction is always, “eww, your going to drink that”. But I promise, what looks like it flowed right out of a nuclear waste dump is one of the most delicious smoothies you will ever taste.

RAW Food, Recipes, Smoothie Tuesday, Uncategorized by OrganicClimber
almond milk, banana, cacao, green, hemp seed, protein, RAW, smoothie, spinach
1 comment

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This smoothie was pretty much an accident, but a good one if you ask me. Sunday afternoon I was making some Kale Chips, and as I was tearing off the leaves I kept having small pieces that were to small to make chips out of, so I would just toss them in my blender which was right in front of me, after all was said and done I had a small hand full of kale greens in the bottom of my blender.

After that I decided to make my salad for the next day and had a fuji apple I sliced up to put in the salad, but an entire apple was going to be too much for the salad, so I tossed about a 1/2 – 3/4 of the apple into the blender as well. In addition to the apple I tossed in 1/2 an avocado as well. At this point I thought I had something pretty good going, so I continued adding ingredients to the blender. When all was said and done I had added 4 TBSP of honey, 2 bananas and a cup of almond milk.

The finished smoothie originally only had one banana but the taste of the kale was still very strong, so I added one more to smooth things out a bit, for those of you that like a strong “greens” taste to your smoothie you may consider not adding the extra banana, but even with two bananas the smoothie still had a bit of a “green” taste to it, but not overwhelmingly so. Just perfect in my book.

The final recipe:

• 1/2 – 3/4 of a fuji apple chopped

• 1/2 an avocado

• 2 bananas

• 1 small hand full of kale

• 4 TBSP of honey

• 1 cup of almond milk

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth

Nutritional Benefits: Kale is one of the most nutrient rich greens you can eat. It contains almost all of your daily requirement of vitamin C, it also provides loads of vitamin A and K, it is also high in fiber as well. Additionally kale contains phytonutrients, which help increase enzymes in the body that ward off harmful carcinogens. The plant is also rich in calcium, lutein (which helps improve eye sight) and iron.

I love discovering new smoothies on accident. I will likely be making this one a lot more since I don’t really care for the taste of kale by itself.
Even though the University of North Texas Mean Green lost Saturday night I still decided to name this smoothie after them; I think they will end up having a decent season.

Health & Fitness, RAW Food, Recipes, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
almond milk, apple, avocado, banana, calcium, enzymes, green, kale, lutein, mean green, nutrition, RAW, smoothie, smothy, vitamin
3 comments

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