Birch Center Newsletter, May 2008

Go Green(s) this Spring

Four ways to get more greens into your diet.
By Melissa Sokulski, L.Ac. of Birch Center for Health

It's spring! The leaves are back on the trees and when I look out my window I see GREEN! In Chinese medicine, green is the color of spring. Green corresponds to the Liver and Gallbladder (the element of wood) and functions to smooth the flow of energy and emotions throughout the body. To make green a bigger part of your life, eat greens!

Green leafy vegetables are so important to health. They contain chlorophyll (the pigment giving them the green color.) Molecularly, chlorophyll is almost the same as red blood cells - plants have magnesium in the center while blood has iron. Green vegetables are a fabulous way to build blood, and are wonderful when dealing with symptoms such as fatigue, weakness, even anemia.

Most of us could use more greens in our diet, and the variety is seemingly endless: from spinach, kale, collards and chard to arugula, dandelion greens, parsley and cilantro.

Here are four ways to get more greens in your diet (your family's diet, too!): Green Smoothies, vegetable juices, salads and soups.

Green Smoothies: This is the most delicious way to get large amounts of greens into your diet! Make a fruit smoothie with your favorite fresh and frozen fruits, and just before blending, add a handful (or two) of greens! Believe it or not, fresh spinach is the best thing I've found...it blends right in and has no taste of its own. You honestly wouldn't know it's there except that it turns your smoothie green (or brownish, if it's a red smoothie!) If you like a little flavor, try cilantro. Craving spiciness? Arugula. Don't mind the bitter? Add lettuce or even dandelion greens. Start with small quantities, and when your taste buds adjust, add more.
Vegetable Juices: If you have a juicer, try adding some greens to your carrot apple juice! You can wrap the carrot with a collard leaf and put it right through. Romaine lettuce with hearts goes through nicely as well. Thinner greens sometimes get spit out of juicers depending on the kind. To avoid this, you can blend the veggies in the blender, and then strain it though a sprouting bag, cheese cloth or a regular cotton cloth.
Salads: Of course, seems obvious. But many people think of salads as boring, made with iceberg lettuce as a base. It's time to spice it up! Salads can be so incredibly delicious. First of all, replace the iceberg with Romaine leaves. You can also add in darker greens like fresh kale or collards...just chop them into tiny pieces! In fact, I like "chopped salads" so much they've replaced ordinary salads in my house. I take my lettuce (Romaine, spinach, arugula and the spring mix) and chop chop chop. Then I chop up celery, cucumber, tomato, pepper, whatever else I want in there. I mix it up, sprinkle a bit of salt, squeeze a lemon over it and drizzle some olive or hemp oil on top. I might even throw on some pumpkin seeds, or - if I'm lucky - there will be an avocado to add.
Soups: Cooked soups or raw soups are a great way to get greens. Chopped spinach, swiss chard, or kale disappears into lentil soup or bean chili. And if we take our chopped salad to the extreme (that is, blend it), it becomes soup! If you do this, you may want to add extra tomato and/or avocado for a creamier base.
Recipe for raw salsa soup (or juice, if you strain it)
In a blender, combine:
- 3 tomatoes
- 1/2 cucumber
- 2 stalks celery
- 1/2 red pepper
- scallions or some onion
- a clove of garlic
- bunch cilantro
- juice of a lime or lemon (or cut the skin off and toss it in)
- 2 large handfuls fresh spinach
- 1 avocado (optional)
- pinch of salt
Blend, pour into bowls and enjoy! If you'd like it as a juice (which I have been doing for my juice feast), strain the mixture through a sprouting bag, cheese cloth, or other cotton cloth.
Enjoy!

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