Baked Eggplant with Crusted Almond FAIL



The baked eggplant... it looks good, doesn't it?

 Roy, his daughter Ashley and I hit up the local farmer's market this past weekend, and I finally bought an eggplant. I've been thinking about making ratatouille or grilled eggplant or anything else eggplanty really. But for some reason every time I saw an eggplant, either at the grocery store or the farmers market, I didn't buy one. So finally, I decided I was going to make something and gosh darnit, the Internet was gonna help me figure out how.

Me at the Farmer's Market. Look at the size of that cabbage!

I found this recipe on Pinterest that looked totally fab, so I decided I would make that, considering I had all the ingredients on hand. I didn't want to make the sauce though, because ideally I wanted the almond crust to stay crunchy and I thought I'd prefer it better sans sauce. I still have no idea if I would have liked this dish more if I'd have made the darn sauce but, most likely, I won't be trying this recipe again. Sorry. I'm not a quitter!! I just don't wanna.

Sliced eggplants

I'm posting about this recipe for two reasons. The first is to prove to you that I'm really not a great cook. I just follow directions, and sometimes poorly at that. I fail a lot but I just try something else. While I may give up on the recipe, I won't give up on the vegetable itself, or heaven's forbid, my lifestyle. That brings me to my second reason of posting this recipe. I failed. And it's kinda funny and sad at the same time. But it should also show you I'm not perfect. This blog won't teach you to cook. If you're anything like me, you will fail sometimes too. But keep at it. It doesn't mean all veggies are nasty. It just means you'll have to find a different way to make it taste delicious! (Or at least, not like salted feet, which is what this eggplant tasted like...)



Egg mixed with almond milk on the left, crushed almonds with paprika on the right



Moving onward. My first mistake was not salting the eggplant and leaving it on a colander. I believe it's supposed to help make the eggplant less bitter. This recipe screwed me over because it said I didn't really have to do the salting and waiting if the eggplant is young. Well, I bought it from a farmers market on Saturday and today is Monday. Seems young to me! Considering when you buy it from the grocery store, it's made its rounds through harvesting, pickup and delivery, not to mention how many days it sits in the bins until it's purchased by you. Am I right or am I right? Next time, I'm definitely salting it and leaving it out on a colander because I know it would have made a difference. I followed the rest of the recipe except that I used almond milk in the egg mixture instead of regular milk because I never buy cow's milk. I'm not a vegan and I'm not lactose intolerant; I just prefer nut milks over cow's milk for all the health benefits. There are probably no steroids in almonds but there sure as heck are in cow's milk. Unless you buy organic. But even then, unsweetened almond milk has 30 calories a cup. Ya can't beat that.



Dredging the eggplant

I also left the eggplant in the oven for longer than the required 25-30 minutes because I flipped the eggplant slices once during the cooking to get all sides nice and crispy, and, considering I let out a lot of hot air, I tacked on a few extra minutes. Maybe that killed it. I don't know. Do you?

Dredging in the almond mixture

So, the final product looked appetizing enough, but I couldn't eat it. It was too salty. Also, it was more than just salty. It hurt my throat. Maybe it was the bitterness of the eggplant combined with the saltiness. I may have over-salted the almonds. I have no idea. But I couldn't eat it.

 



Ready to go in the oven

Did I mention I didn't have manchego cheese? I read that you can substitute Parmesan cheese or sharp cheddar, so I used some Parmesan on some of the eggplant slices and sharp cheddar on the others but all of it was just bad. And it really didn't have anything to do with the cheese. So I'm just going to declare this an epic fail. I'm sorry y'all. I wish I had better news, but I ended up making myself a big ass salad and topped it off with a homemade chocolate peanut butter cake in a mug (to make myself feel better); an amazingly delicious recipe I got from www.chocolatecoveredkatie.com. You can find that recipe here and I highly recommend it. That woman is amazing and I will be discussing her recipes in more detail soon. For now, I hope you can laugh and cry with me over this monstrosity.

Not happy with the results

Keep on keepin' on!

-Kale Queen

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Update - My friend Jessica Gray was awesome enough to read this post and give me some tips about eggplant. Jessica wrote: "Quick tip - a young eggplant will be small, not very thick-skinned, and it will be completely pale inside. The more dark the seeds are, the more bitter it will be. If it's bigger than a zucchini or if it has any brownish seeds, salt it." Thank you Jessica. I will definitely remember these tips.

My friend Mikey Chmielewski also gave me some pointers: "I use eggplant a lot and have never done the salting bit. To me, it is the skin that is bitter and should be peeled. I have also found that cutting in chunks rather than the uniform slices made for better results. I'm not too familiar with almond milk - does it have a similar fat content to low fat milk? If not that makes a huge difference in a lot of recipes. Sometimes even just substituting skim milk for low fat milk will destroy an otherwise awesome execution in the kitchen."

I think I will actually attempt to try both of my friend's suggestions. It might be a fun thing to see if the chunks versus slices make the recipe better. And regular milk instead of almond milk. I figured if I'm already making eggplant with an almond crust, then using almond milk would make it even more magnificent, but I will have to try the recipe the way it was intended.

Thank you for your input guys!!!

-Kale Queen

The Kale Queen's FAVORITE Chocolate Peanut Butter Green Shake

I was going to post about this shake yesterday, but I messed it up while making it, so I had to keep adding more and more ingredients into the blender until it came out kind of right. When I was done, I had made enough for two large shakes, and had lost all sense of measurements. Sh*t happens. I don't always have a successful day in the kitchen. My biggest problem is I don't write anything down, and I always think I can be like my grandma, who knows exactly how much four tablespoons are even though she doesn't even own measuring spoons. (This phenomenon is known as The Eyeball Effect, and was evidently not something I inherited). Cooking is a science, and if you add too much of one ingredient, or not enough of another, it can be catastrophic. So, my resolution is to write things down, and to stop being so damn lazy and actually measure my ingredients appropriately since my eyeballs are so... Average.

Hopefully, my shakes will become more consistent. Roy teases me, because I make fun of my mom for never following recipes and never measuring anything. But she's had many more years of practice. And she goes way beyond simply not following a recipe. My mother can take a recipe for soup and end up with a pot pie. (Okay so I exaggerate slightly, but you know what I mean.)

Today I tried really really hard, so I hope you love this shake. This is my favoritest, most yummiest, delicious-est shake evarrr!!! Do you like chocolate? Do you like peanut butter? Are you allergic to peanut butter? If you are, I just want to give you a hug so badly, and cradle you in my arms and tell you everything's gonna be okay... And weep with you... I give you guys props because I can't even imagine what I'd do without peanut butter... No more Reese's? No more of my favorite Nature Valley granola bars? No more tablespoons of peanut butter, just plain on a spoon like that? *sigh* Oy, I got carried away again. So let me just cut to the chase. (My apologies, I've had a glass of wine...)

1/2 cup almond milk. I know, store bought, the horror...

For this shake, I really try getting the color of the shake to look like it's a chocolate peanut butter shake so, I start off by brewing a cup of coffee. I added 1/2 cup of black coffee to the blender, and 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk. I ran out of my flax seeds today, so I only added 1 TBS chia seeds (unmilled) to the blender. Then I measured (!!!) and added two TBS of chocolate PB2 (PB2 is a peanut butter powder. It's made entirely of peanuts, so it's not artificial, but all the oil has been sucked out of it, leaving you with a peanut butter powder that has 85% less fat than regular peanut butter. Here's a full post I wrote so you can learn more about PB2 and other powdered peanut butter varieties), one TBS unsweetened cocoa powder, one TBS agave and a capful of vanilla extract. (FYI, a capful of vanilla extract from a one or two ounce bottle should equal a teaspoon. I read that online and it has been accurate with all types of vanilla extract bottles.) Then, I cranked the blender up to variable 3. (I have a Vitamix, so if you don't, just turn on your blender and give it a go for about thirty seconds.)



This next part is so super important and the reason this shake sucked so much yesterday. Yesterday, I added the greens before I added the beet greens. Nay sir!!! The color of the shake came out to be a color that can best be described as fermented poo on baby's butt (I have had the displeasure of changing a few diapers in my day. I'm so not ready to be doing that on a daily basis...) So today, I added five stems of beet greens before I added the regular greens. After blending in the beet greens, the shake-in-progress was a delightful purple color.

Then, I grabbed my gallon-sized Ziploc bag of frozen greens (kale, spinach, baby bok choy, chard), raised the variable of the Vitamix up to 8, and slowly added them to the blender until it became a great chocolatey color. I ended up not using the entire bag, because I didn't want fermented-poop colors again. But that's ok, because I had already added lots of nutrients with the beet greens, so it's not like I was skimping on my veggies. I let the mixture blend, and used the tamper to scrape the sides of the canister down. Once the shake was an evenly pulverized chocolatey vision of yumminess, I added 1/4 of a frozen banana to the blender, and then about a cup of ice cubes. The ice amount is totally up to you. If you want a thicker shake, add more ice; more liquidy shakes, add less ice.



Me and my frozen greens. The bag appeared fuller before I scrunched it to break down the pieces.

Also, if you want it sweeter, add more agave, honey, Stevia, etc. If you're losing weight, I recommend you try to slowly ease yourself off of using quite so much sweetener, but if you're a newbie, then you are plain awesome for trying to change your lifestyle, and you deserve that extra tablespoon or two. No one changes their palate overnight. But it will eventually change, so quit beating yourself up about it, and be proud of yourself that you kick ass and eat veggies for breakfast, LIKE A BOSS!!!

Once my shake reached this chocolatey color, I stopped adding greens

So, to recapitulate (I was an English major, so I'm snotty and like big words)...

Chocolate Peanut Butter Green Shake

1/2 cup black coffee

1/2 cup almond milk

2 TBS PB2 (chocolate or regular)

1 TBS unsweetened cocoa powder

1 TBS agave (or more!) or sweetener if choice

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 TBS chia seeds

1 TBS milled flax seeds

5 stems of beet greens

2 cups (approx) mixed greens

1/4 frozen banana

Ice

Once again, I'll repeat, either from this post or previous ones:

1) ALWAYS use a frozen banana. It changes everything.

2) Add beet green first! Then add green greens so you can get the color right.

3) You're drinking more vegetables in one sitting than most people eat in a day. If it's not sweet enough, add more sweetener. You deserve it! If it makes you want to drink another shake tomorrow, you already won. If you're disgusted by it, you're likely not having a second date with your blender tomorrow, so make it work!

Til next time

-Kale Queen

THE Pistachio Ice Cream Kale Shake AKA The King’s Shake

Go ahead and bookmark this page. I’m just trying to saving you time.

This is the first ever kale shake I made that didn’t consist of me dumping fruits and kale in a blender and hoping for the best. I’d been in the process of losing weight and had been making kale shakes for several months when I stumbled upon a Pistachio Ice Cream Kale Shake recipe at http://healthyblenderrecipes.com. You can find that recipe here. I don’t know about you, but my favorite ice cream flavor is Pistachio, so I made this shake as soon as possible. I will say I never followed this shake to the extreme, because I live too far away from any Whole Foods store to get stuff like “alcohol-free vanilla extract” and at the time, I was too broke to purchase “raw cashews” when a huge can of Planter’s cashews was under $10 at Wal-Mart. I also have absolutely no idea what “Celtic sea salt is” but I imagined it was, you know, salt, which I omitted anyway because the Planter's cashews were salted already (*gasp* I know).

The shake was amazzzing. Beyond amazing! It was glorious sunshine and rainbows and sugarplums and daisies. Roy was raving about it. I was making us a second helping almost immediately. And we agreed, with stuffed bellies and unzipped pants, that we would forever more have this shake, and only this shake, for breakfast every morning.

Since that time though, I’ve come across tons of other awesome kale shakes that I make every day. Roy will only ever have his favorite, this Pistachio Ice Cream one, so we buy cashews by the large tin now, kale by the case (that’s 24 bunches), and ginger by the pound. Practically. I’ve since changed the original recipe by adding more kale and other greens and reducing the bananas. It’s still amazing, just slightly less carby. And I’ll demonstrate how I make it with tips on making it really ice-creamy. But I’d still recommend, especially if you’re a kale noob, to try the original recipe and work your way to a less sugary, more fibery shake. It takes time. But the fewer sweets you eat, the less you crave them, and if you’re trying to change your lifestyle by losing weight and consuming fewer carbs/sugars, you will eventually want to tone down the sweetness. Not because you’re forced to, but because you seriously will need to. For instance, I can’t stomach a Green Tea Frap that I used to love at Starbucks. It tastes like liquefied sugar to me. (Frankly, it probably is…)

Moving on. The first step is to freeze your bananas and your greens. Roy and I buy kale by the case and bags of spinach and other greens. When I get home, I wash them with vinegar water to kill all the pesticides, insects, mold and feces (I know, freakin’ gross. But what do you think E. coli is?) I use a 1:1 ratio of vinegar and water. I don’t know if you need that much vinegar, but seriously, it’s an inexpensive way to kill off all the harmful stuff you might be eating. Let your veggies soak for ten minutes, rinse well, and start bagging. We buy gallon sized Ziploc bags and fill them up, push out as much air as possible, and zip ‘em. Then, I stack them in the freezer. (If you’d see our fridge after bagging up a case of kale, you’d see why we need to flatten and stack the bags.) As for your bananas, wait until they’re super ripe before you peel them and slice them up. I’d say slice them to about 1” cylinders. Spread out the banana chunks on a plate and stick them in the freezer for about half an hour before you bag them up. This will keep them from sticking to each other. When you need them, you just grab as many pieces as you want. I am not fancy shmancy with a flash freezer, so this is my method. Why freeze them you ask? Because this is how you get that creamy consistency in your shake. Using ice will only thicken up your shake, but freezing the bananas (at the very least) is essential to get that ice creaminess. I freeze the greens too so that I’ll need to use less ice, thereby avoiding watering down the shake.

frozen bananas cut up in 1" discs

So for this shake, I grab my first five ingredients (1/2 cup water, ½ cup cashews, a small hunk of ginger equaling roughly a teaspoon, a capful of the vanilla extract, and three TBS of agave) and toss those in the blender. I turn on my Vitamix, crank it up to around variable 3, and let it blend. In the meantime, I get a TBS each of chia and flax seeds and mill those in my coffee grinder. (I call it a coffee grinder, because that’s what it was designed to do, but coffee has never even come close to this puppy.)

You can buy milled flax seeds, but I met a girl a couple of years ago, Rebecca, who was a Nutrition major in college, and she told me that packaged milled flax seeds don’t have as much fiber and protein as flax seeds you mill yourself. I don’t know how or why the protein magically dissipates while in the packaging, but I took her word for it and mill the seeds myself. What’s an extra thirty seconds anyway?

just in case you thought I was lying about it being a gallon of greens...

Once the seeds are milled, I grab my gallon sized Ziploc bag full of greens from my freezer. I started off using only kale, but now I buy all sorts of greens and wash and freeze them in the same bag so that we always have a variety of nutrients in our shakes. Instead of just kale, there’s now spinach, beet greens, baby bok choy, chard, etc. (I left the name Kale Queen though, because Veggie Queen sounds too corny. HA! Pun intended!) Before adding the greens to the already blended cashew cream mix in the blender, I up the variable up slowly to eight and then I add the frozen greens little by little. I still need to use the tamper to get the greens down, but it’s a much easier job, and takes much less time if you do this bit slowly.

After a couple of minutes of blending and making sure the shake is in liquefied state, I add one small disc of a frozen banana. The original recipe calls for two frozen bananas, but Roy says it tastes too banana-y with even half of a frozen banana. So I only add a small chunk. I still recommend that you use more until you get used to the taste and figure out how much you want to use. Once the banana is pulverized, I add the milled chia and flax seeds. This is not on the original recipe, but it’s something I add to all shakes. The chia and flax seeds are chock full of fiber and protein, omegas and God only knows what else. They’re super good for you, and an easy way to up your protein and fiber intake. Also, they provide a nutty flavor (or so they say. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between a shake with and a shake without these.)

Once all the ingredients are in, and the blender doesn’t sound like it’s dying on the inside from chugging along your shake, you're ready to add the ice. The ice not only cools your shake down to a nice refreshing cold temperature, but it adds volume. Roy loves super thick shakes. I like my shakes to be super liquidy. So once his shake is made, I add a ton of ice all at once to the blender for another thirty seconds. I add much less ice for myself, if any at all. It is totally up to you and what your preference is. Thick or thin? Try it both ways. HA!

My Kale King and his mighty goblet

You’ll notice Roy and I have our own cups. I have no idea how many ounces we drink in one shake, but it’s anywhere between 24 and 30 ounces. So I bought these ginormous glass mugs from somewhere, and then got this special marker you can use to draw on glass. Once you bake the glass, it’s permanent, so I made us our very own Kale King and Kale Queen mugs. Aren’t they cute?! And isn't he adorable? Err... I mean manly! And King-ly and such.

So to recap, here is the recipe below to Roy's Kale King Pistachio Ice Cream Kale Shake... (wow that's verbose)..

1/2 cup water
½ cup cashews
1 tsp ginger root
Capful of vanilla extract (or 1 tsp)
3 TBS of agave
Gallon Ziploc bag of mixed frozen greens (approx 4 cups)
1 TBS milled flax seeds
1 TBS milled chia seeds
1/8th (approx) frozen banana
Ice (ice baby)

I know you’ll love this shake. Yes, there aren’t any pistachios in it! And you might think it doesn’t taste like pistachio ice cream. Whatever. I call it that because that’s what it was called on the healthyblenderrecipes site. At home, we call it “Roy’s favorite.” So maybe you guys can refer to it as the King’s Shake. Yeah. I like that. Ok! I’ll have to share with you MY favorite shake. I made it up myself, because I’m pretty badass like that. But I’m sure there are hundreds of very similar recipes on the web. All I’ll tell you for now is that it involves chocolate and peanut butter, and it’s 100% guilt free (unless you’re allergic to peanuts…. then… you shouldn’t drink it, or you’d definitely feel guilty… and a little ill… so… sorry) Til then!

 -Kale Queen

Rainbow Wrap

Have you ever seen those Subway commercials with Jared talkin' about how he lost all his weight eating Subway sandwiches? I don't know about you, but I can tell you I certainly never lost any weight chomping on a loaf of bread, cheese and overly processed deli meats made of animal products I didn't even know existed. Especially considering the whole bread-to-meat ratio you get. It's gotta be something like 84.3% bread 15.7% meat/veggies/sauce. I don't even know if I did that math correctly, but I made up those numbers like most people do when offering statistics. (Did you know 90% of statistics are made up?!)

So as with all things I no longer eat much of (sandwiches, Mac n Cheese, pasta, pizza, potatoes, most desserts...) I tried to figure out a way to reproduce  a healthier (and colorful!) but still yummy counterfeit when I was in the mood for a wrap. So I turned to my fridge, and let all the cold air out while contemplating my options.
There was leftover grilled chicken, and all sorts of colorful produce. Since I don't have any bread products in the house, I instantly thought of making a lettuce wrap, but I didn't have any lettuce. (Truth be told, it's kind of a useless vegetable. Lettuce is essentially just crunchy green water with a smidge of fiber and a sprinkle of other nutrients. I don't ever buy it.) But I had red cabbage! (Why do they call it red cabbage? It's not red. It's purple and white. Why isn't it at least called purple cabbage? Who was the color-blind naming guru of the red cabbage?) I carefully removed a big leaf from the red cabbage and chopped up a bunch of my other salad favorites like cucumbers, cilantro, strawberries, spinach, sweet peppers, matchstick carrots and a handful of cashews. I heated up the leftover chicken I had and threw it all together in the middle of the cabbage leaf, trying to roll it up like a wrap. (As you can see from the photo, my wrap became a taco, but nevertheless it was awesome!)

The last step was dressing. I've recently embarked on becoming an amateur little Paul Newman by making my own salad dressings, but really if you're buying ranch from the grocery store, no one's gonna shoot you. (Ok, someone might, but I say, if you're already cutting out the bread and adding chicken or steak instead of bologna and cheese, you deserve some damn ranch! Just don't drown everything in it).
For this red cabbage wrap creation I decided on a honey mustard dressing, but really, whatever strikes your fancy will work.

For the Honey Mustard Dressing, I mixed up 1/4 cup Greek yogurt, 1 TBS olive oil, 1 TBS apple cider vinegar, 1 TBS Dijon mustard, 1 TBS agave, and a pinch of black pepper. Amazeballs. Nuff said.

The wrap, errr... taco was delicious. The chicken was warm, and the veggies were super crispy. The cashews added a crunch and it all went well with the honey mustard. The cabbage leaf held up surprisingly well, even after five bites, and my meal looked like an edible Lisa Frank commercial, (hence why I named this deliciousness the Rainbow Wrap.)

I would have named it the Lisa Frank wrap but I'm afraid of the legal implications so we'll just stick to rainbows. No one can own those!

I hope you enjoy this easy recipe. (I sure as heck did. Can you tell?) Let me know how you changed it up. Different veggies? Added fruit? Ranch dressing or homemade? I’d love new ideas for improving it. Til then, enjoy!

- Kale Queen

Ranty Time

I've mentioned I'm not a good cook, right? I mean, I cook, and many times I actually produce something pretty "daggum nommy" as Roy says, but I am not inventive. Most of the meals I cook are recipes I've found online like on Pinterest, or recipes someone else told me about. And, since I lean toward healthy cooking, I check out a lot of vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, and paleo sites.

Have you ever noticed the recipes that call for homemade items, like almond milk? I totally understand the benefits of making things yourself, and I do make a lot of items myself rather than buying them, like salad dressing, but sometimes I just use stuff I buy in the store. I feel like the recipes are judging me. I'll whip out my Silk Coconut Milk and I can sense the recipe staring out at me from my iPad screen, like, "ohh, she's too good to cut open a coconut and scrape the coconut meat by hand and blend it. Does she not know how many chemicals and nitrates and toxins and....." Oh Holy Moses. Yes, I know. But ain't nobody got time fo' dat!" (I love that lady so hard!)

I thought about all this when I saw a hilarious pin on Pinterest. I had to post it, because it's so darn true.

For the record, I will never judge anyone for buying the frozen peas instead of fresh ones, or buying salad dressing instead of making it yourself. Are you eating a salad with that dressing, or dipping fries in it? If it's the former, then you are freaking awesome and you're already doing better than, like, insert potentially incorrect statistic here% of people. Did you buy cashews at Walmart for $0.33 an ounce instead of going to a health food store to buy the organic raw cashews that cost like $0.88 an ounce? Me too! Hey, if I had money flowing out of my eyeballs, I would probably buy the raw, organic, not-tainted-with-God-only-knows-what cashews, but for now, those recipes can bite me.

Ok, I'm done. =P

-Kale Queen

Piña Greenada Shake

Mornings have become my favorite time of day. I can eat practically anything I want. I can have a cup of sugar if I wanted, and I’d be fine, so long as I didn’t touch much else the remainder of the day. (That’s not ideal, I’m jus’ sayin’.)

I’ve changed the way I do breakfast the last year or so. I used to not eat breakfast at all, because I didn’t have a lot of time to make breakfast. But then I also didn’t care for breakfast food. I like it, but I usually like it when it’s not breakfast time. For instance, I only ever want cereal as a midnight snack. As with other “regular” breakfast items, I only want eggs every once in a while, and even when I was a chunk munk, I tried to abstain from pancakes. Now, things are very different. If I want to splurge, I’ll usually do it in the mornings. If it’s splurge worthy food that is not available until midday, I eat it as early as possible. Yesterday, I had sushi. Sushi isn’t bad for you, but it’s carby due to the rice, so we ate dinner at 5 p.m. instead of 7, and there was no snacking after that. Ok, except for taste testing my pineapple when I was cutting it up, but that was absolutely necessary and deliriously delicious fundamental in prepping for my shakes…….

Anyway, I made a tropical shake this morning using that pineapple! Roy of course wanted his usual shake. His favorite is the Pistachio Ice Cream Kale Shake; a recipe I found online that I have since tweaked considerably. You can find my post about it here. I don’t have a “usual” shake. I will get bored. Roy said he could pick five foods he’d eat forever, and he’d be happy. Me? I need variety. I need excitement! I NEED SPONTANEITY! WHOOOOOO!!!

*sugar rush*

Roy’s shakes definitely have less sugar in them, because I barely add any fruits in his shakes. Just a tiny piece of frozen banana and a couple of tablespoons of agave. Mine usually have wayyyy more fruits, liquids that aren’t always just water, and maybe a little bit of agave. But they’re natural, they’re still healthy, and like I said, I can have all the sugar I want in the mornings. I’ll burn them off by nighttime. Would I drink these shakes for dinner? Probably not. I usually don’t. But then again, I try to avoid all carbs and sugars after 2 p.m. (Again, something I'll have to elaborate on later.)

Here’s the recipe for this delicious happiness. There are a thousand ways you can change it. If you want to be full for hours, add ¼ dry oatmeal while blending. You can soak them overnight, or just toss them in the blender raw like I do usually. This shake is a light one though (relatively haha!)

Oh, and a side note, if you want it sweeter, add agave. Or add more fruit. I have cut down considerably on the fruit to veggie ratio, but when I make these shakes for Roy's kids, I have to add more sweetness or they don't like them.

Piña Greenada

½ cup coconut water

¼ cup coconut milk

1 tsp ginger root

½ clementine

 2 cups frozen spinach

2 cups frozen kale

 ½ cup frozen pineapple

¼ cup frozen cantaloupe and honeydew

¼ cup frozen bananas

1 TBS milled flax seeds

1 TBS milled chia seeds

1 cup ice

Now, I have a science to blending too. I usually add the liquids first, and then blend in the greens slowly. The greens are leafy, and they blend easier. I add the more solid frozen fruits last because they act as ice cubes, so you’ll need fewer ice cubes to make the shake all cold and shake-y, and that means a less diluted shake! Honestly, you can avoid adding ice cubes entirely, but I like it thick (TWSS), and ice cubes thicken the consistency.

Hope you enjoyed this shake. You can see by my happy face that I enjoyed mine J J J

Pineapple Happiness

I bought a pineapple *does a happy dance*

My boyfriend Roy and I went to the Farmer's Market this weekend because I wanted some veggies. I wanted to look at some kale, maybe some spinach and cucumbers to make salads, and honey of course (they always had someone selling those sticks of flavored honey, like blueberry and watermelon, but unfortunately the only available one this weekend was clover honey.)

So while walking through the lanes, I noticed someone had pineapples available, and they were only charging $3! Now, I've been eyeing the pineapples at Publix for some time now, and they're always either $4 or $5, so I jumped on the home-grown pineapple from the market. I just bought some coconut water and was already thinking about the tropical kale and spinach shakes I could make during the work week. Post 5 p.m., I might even add some rum and make it a party! It's not like you can taste the greens anyway. I could make a green piña colada, why not?

I wish I'd taken a photo of the pineapple, but I only thought of it after I had sliced it up and removed the rind. You can see the utter fail of my pineapple cleaning. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm good at this stuff. There was pineapple juice all over my table, I was cutting the pineapple on a too-small bamboo cutting board, my knife is probably all wrong, and DULL, and I piled on the chunks of pineapple on a paper plate that was 1) too small and 2) too flimsy. But you live, and you learn.

Right before I started chopping up that bad boy, I watched a YouTube video about regrowing your pineapple by chopping off the green leaves and planting it. I was only too proud to plop the top off, without having to cut it, like the video shows. Once I cleaned the pineapple "nub" and put it in a vase to soak though, I heard the guy on the video talking about it taking 12-18 months to harvest a pineapple fruit and I mayyyy have tossed that idea straight out the window. With our potential move coming in the next few months, I already know I will not be carefully transporting my pina-baby over to the new home. But, it did look super cute!! And if you have a garden, and a year and a half to wait for one damn pineapple, by all means.

Once I got over that little bit of sadness and laid to rest my pineapple fetus, I got around to cutting the rest of the pineapple up. What I usually do when we buy fruit for shakes is wash it, cut it up, and freeze it at its ripest. Our freezer doesn't have Tombstone pizzas, frozen eggrolls, or Hot Pockets like it used to. It's actually full of gallon sized Ziploc bags of spinach, strawberries, blackberries, bananas, kale, mangoes, cantaloupes, honeydews, etc etc. We buy kale from Publix by the case (but that’s a whole ‘nother blog entry).

Oh, I forgot the most important aspect of cutting up the fruit: taste testing. You wanna make sure your fruit is ripe and juicy. (Most of the fruit I buy are for shakes, so I don’t eat a lot of it while it’s still ripe and sweet and there’s juice running down your face and your hands are all sticky with its sugary syrup and… wow I got a little carried away there. Two more seconds and I was fixin’ to start reciting sonnets to strawberries!)

Once all the fruit is cut up, I bag it up in gallon sized Ziploc bags and place them in the freezer all spread out, so the pieces can freeze individually. Otherwise, you go to make a shake, and you’re trying to throw in fruit cubes that have been solidified into a solid brick. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I’ve broken spoons trying to break apart solidified fruit. I’ve gotten frostbite on my fingertips too. (Ok that last bit was a little melodramatic, but it was freezing!)

Within an hour or two, if you need the space in the freezer, you can go ahead and just place the bag anywhere, all jammed up between other bags and frozen chicken. So long as the pieces are already frozen up, you’re fine.

Viola! You now have frozen chunks for your blender happiness. I'll share my tropical kale and spinach shake tomorrow. Wish me luck!

-Kale Queen



Howdy! I'm the Kale Queen

My friend Natasha dubbed me the Kale Queen and the name stuck. Mostly because "Queen" is part of the title, and that's freaking awesome. But also because I became associated with something healthy. Kale. Yeah! Fiber. Woot!

You may read this and wonder if I'm medicated (or need to be) but hold that thought. The reason I'm quite excited to be The Kale Queen is because my nickname used to be Flabby Gabby. That's just not sexy. I couldn't even be a rapper with that name! Can you imagine?

Hey, yo
Whaddup bro
My name is Flabby Gabby
And I'm feelin' kinda crabby
....

I can't even go on. It's just sad...

So anyway, my story begins too far back and can only be truly told over time. But the gist is, if you haven't caught on yet, I used to be overweight. I was 40 lbs heavier to be exact. (Ok, 35, but it's winter, and I needed some padding ok? Don't judge me!!!)

I tried so many diets, but I never kept up with them after a few days or weeks. Usually it was because I was too hungry, too grumpy, too lazy, too stressed, my weight plateaued, I was traveling somewhere, my period arrived early, my period arrived late, my mother was visiting, Olive Garden's Unlimited Pasta Bowl was back, the McRib resurfaced, I bombed an exam, my boss was mean, or whatever other excuse I had.

So after being miserable for so long and realizing I had spent the last decade unhappy, insecure and FAT, I slowly, (ever so slowly), changed my life.

When I say slowly, I mean I started by adding vegetables to my plate, and not changing anything else. Then I started walking at night for ten minutes. A month later, I tried cutting back on white bread and switching to wheat. Then I walked longer. I hit half a mile. A week later I walked a full mile. Over time, I hit four miles. I chewed gum. I drank more water. I set little goals and met them. I weighed myself everyday. I started drinking kale shakes. And a year later, I dropped down from a size 11 to a 1. I went from 140 lbs to 100. At 5'0, I'm right in the healthy range for my age and my height.

Now I'm in maintenance mode, and I try to stay between 100-105 lbs. I can splurge if I'm on the lower end, and bulk up on more veggies if I'm on the higher end.

I learned how to cook, or rather, I learned to read recipes and replicate them (sometimes successfully!) And most importantly, I found a way to make healthy food yummy. (I try to get feedback from two particularly picky teenagers, and a carnivore-only boyfriend, so you know if I say it's good, it's goooooooood.)

I hope you guys enjoy all the recipes on here, some I take full credit for, and some I find online. I will post the epically delicious success stories, and the horrors too. Mostly because they're funny as hell (like the time I made chocolate black bean brownies and brought them to a Super Bowl party and started dry-heaving when I tasted them). And also to show that it's not always easy, it's not always yummy, but I do my darn best, and I won't give up. I hope I can inspire you, and point you in the right direction. (And make you snort-laugh every now and then.)

Enjoy!!

-Kale Queen