Category: Chlorophyll

Green Green Grass Of Home

Grown wheatgrass

Nothing is as simple as growing grass and yet… a lot of people seem to have trouble to get those green blades up and ready to juice.  So I thought it might be a good idea to tell you how you can be successful in growing your lovely waving  grass  in the light at your window. What are the most common problems I hear about?

  • Mold
  • The berries take a long time to sprout
  • The grass is growing irregularly and much too ‘thin’

I must say I had some trouble when I started too. All you need is a little bit of practice and some good tips. When you have a problem, ask yourself what is the cause and you go on from there to find your own solution. But you won’t have to with this little guide…

Green Green Grass Of Home

Let me start from the beginning; sprouting the berries. The first times when I was sewing my wheatgrass, ( and I bet a lot of starters do) I simple threw the seeds in a tray with organic soil, drenched it with water and put it up in the light because when you need to grow something, it needs light no? Nope, it doesn’t! Actually seeds need to be in the dark to be triggered and sprout. They need that signal; “you are under the ground so better start growing so you can see the light!” To grow your grass easier, you have to help it a bit by soaking and sprouting the seeds first.

Soaking

SOAKING BEFORE SEWING

  • Rinse one cup of wheatberries so eventual residue can come off
  • Soak  them covered up with pure water overnight
  • Next morning rinse them until the water is clear
  • Put them in a sprouting bag or jar and turn the jar upside down so the water is removed and the seeds can’t get moldy
  • Cover up with a dark towel and place them where you don’t forget about them
  • Rinse them 2 to 3 times a day
  • When they get their little tail, they are ready to sew

Ready to sew, the tails may even be smaller

SEWING

  • Take a plastic tray that is perforated (this is important so the seeds will never be too wet and grow mold)
  • Make  a layer of organic soil of about 1.96 to 2 inches (the quality of the grass is depending on the quality of the soil!)
  • Wet the soil but don’t make it too wet (mold)
  • Now you can sew your sprouts; very thick! You may not see any soil anymore or you will only have some poor blades)

Every day!

  • Spray the seeds
  • Take a piece of newspaper, make it wet and cover the tray with it (this way the seeds can keep the moist they need)
  • Place this tray in a dark, cool place
  • Wet the newspaper every day, and spray the soil and seeds very well(this way you won’t get too much water in the tray)

White Grass After Two Days

  • After two or three days, you will have lovely white grass
  • When it is about 2.7 inches or 7 cm high, take the newspaper off, get it out of the dark and bring into the sunlight!

Into The Light

  • Now the miracle happens and it is always lovely to see it happen; photosynthesis turns the grass green and makes it grow
  • After about 7 days, your grass will be about 6 inches or even more

Ready for Harvest

HARVEST & JUICE

The way you harvest your grass is just as important to receive all the minerals and nutrients. Most minerals are close to the soil.

Harvest

  • Take a sharp knife or scissors and cut off the grass as close as possible to the soil.
  • The best way to get all the juice out of grass is juice it with a slow juicer or manual juicer.
  • If you don’t have either of them, you can make a diluted version with your blender: put two handfuls of grass in it and pour a little bit of water on top to get it going, blend and strain through a fine sieve or a nut milk bag. This juice is not as strong as the real thing, but it is still better than having none. This is how I did it until I could buy my slow juicer.

Wheatgrass Juice From The Blender

TIPS & NOTES

  • Don’t blend grass too long in your blender; it may dull the blade
  • Mold can be caused by too much water, but also by too few water! When you spray your seeds, you have much more control.
  • Choose a very good organic soil to benefit your grass at the fullest! Grass absorbs about 97% of all minerals in the soil; so if you want to have good quality wheat grass, the soil has to be rich in minerals.
  • Buy organic seeds who will give you all you need.
  • Something I always do to give my soil extra vitamins and enzymes is when I rinse my smoothie glass, I use that water to spray the grass. If it doesn’t help, it sure won’t harm and by the way; I am sure it is the best fertilizer for my grass.
  • Don’t let the seeds sprout too long. Don’t wait with sewing until their tail is very long; it will take away their strength and they will grow slow and look poor. A little tail is all you need; the wall is now soft enough and the sprout is ready to grow.
  • Wheatgrass can be different depending on the kind of seeds you bought. Some seeds give long, narrow blades as the ones I was growing above. But you will also notice that other pictures have grass with wider blades. I prefer those because they are much juicier.
  • If you always want a tray ready, start a system with a routine that keeps you juicing and drinking this healing grass.
  • When you have mold, you can’t juice the grass anymore. Throw it upside down on your compost; it brings oxygen in compost.
  • You can grow and harvest one tray twice; it will look rougher and not as long anymore but just fine to juice!
  • The grass will “eat” all the soil and form a “mat” with the roots. This is first class compost!
  • A great organic brand for wheatberries is Geo. The seeds are strong and the grass is …. sweet and green! To purchase feel free to visit my website.

Geo seeds and their grass

Good luck! If any questions, feel free to email me.

Alive Smoothie

I make smoothies every day. But sometimes you have that one smoothie which exceeds all others. It is a combination of factors and you don’t have them always under control. Each smoothie tastes different, even with the exact same ingredients. Simply because all vegetables and fruit add their own personal flavor. One banana can be soothing sweet and another hardly have any taste. Same with juices; one pound of carrots can taste like heaven and another will be rather bitter and spoil your sweet soup. So a lot depends on that willing touch of your chosen fruit of that day.

Notice the oxygen bubbling up in this smoothie! Ready to shake you up and make you come alive!

Sometimes you think you are brewing the greatest smoothie ever and when you take your first highly expecting sip, it turns out you can hardly swallow it down. It happens to everybody. So what can you do then with that rich smoothie, full of nutrients and expensive superfoods and greens and fruit? Drink it up with two fingers shutting your nose? Because the last thing you want to do is throw it out!

I discovered how to save those “failures” and have a wonderful drink after all. Just pour that smoothie in your nut milk bag and sssquuueeeze out the juice. The pulp is a great fertilizer for your wheatgrass (mingle it under your soil, all those minerals will be soaked by the grass and provide you strong shots!) and the juice… the juice is just great! The taste changes and you can pour all the glorious nutrients down to your body.

But now more about my Alive Smoothie. I always use what I have laying around and was lucky with the combination and the great tastes of the greens and fruits. My mustard greens were soft, the banana sweet, the spinach soothing, and then… my secret weapon: rejuvelac! You know how much I am into this elixir of life. I always use it to make my smoothies the best, both taste and content.

When you use rejuvelac instead of water, you add an extra dimension; life. And that is what you will feel in your body; life. You can make a whole lot of rejuvelac and store it easily for two weeks in your refrigerator or in your basement so you don’t have anything else to do but grab and smooth away.

Alive Smoothie

TOOLS YOU NEED

A blender

INGREDIENTS

  • One sweet banana
  • A handful of mustard greens
  • Two leaves of kale
  • A grab of parsley
  • Fill up the rest with spinach
  • A handful of Goiji Berries
  • A TBS Maca
  • A TBS bee pollen
  • Fill up the blender until halfway with rejuvelac

THE MAKING OF…

  • Blend and taste. Not sweet enough to your taste? Add a juicy pear…

Drink, chew and be alive!

Mustard Green

Electrolyte Shock

When I woke up I had no idea what time it was. It was too dark, too silent, too weary to get up. I notice that I am even more sensitive than ever to the changing hours in autumn. Only one hour, but my whole system still seems disturbed after a week. Even the metabolic clock of my pets is messed up; they start waiting for food one hour earlier than usual.

Electrolytes!

I was wondering what to do about it when it struck me. I would start my day with an electrolyte shock to awaken and coop with the dark weather. So I jumped out of the bed, showered, dressed and took one of my fresh Thai coconuts out of the refrigerator. I grabbed my impressive meat cleaver -with which I will never cleave meat!- and chopped off the coconuts head.  Hmm, have to make a picture of this, I thought. I have to write about all these electrolytes in only one glass! Have you never wondered how this energizing water gets into this heavenly nut? I did!

Electrolytes in a glass

I found the answer when I was reading David Wolfe’s book “Superfoods”. What is so beautiful about coconuts is that they carry and nurture their water as a human pregnancy. Almost nine months is how long it takes to filter each quart in that hard shell. Which must make you wonder how it got there in the first place. Let me quote the master himself here because I can’t think of other words: “The water rises through innumerable fibers which purify the water before it ends up in the sterile nut.”  This water is the most powerful water in nature because of the highest levels of electrolytes.

Moreover young coconut water is very similar to the structure of our blood plasma and therefor was even used in  the Pacific battles of World War II as blood transfusion for wounded soldiers. Coconut water in our veins?? Our blood exists of about 55% of plasma (about the same structure as coconut water) and 45% of hemoglobin (for the transportation of oxygen). This hemoglobin is “essentially transformed plant blood”, chlorophyll. So this means that when you make yourself a drink of fresh coconut water (55% plasma) mixed with fresh green leaf juice or the by Dr. Ann Wigmore recommended wheatgrass juice (45% hemoglobin), you will treat your body on a blood transfusion. Isn’t this amazingly easy?!

Blood Transfusion

If you can’t imagine that you will be able to drink a combination like this, let me give you these very simple yet lovely tips.

  • Use coconut water as the base of your smoothies. It is delicious and will sweeten it up.
  • Take a glass of coconut water and add one table spoon of “green superfood” which is packed with the chlorophyll of barley, wheatgrass, broccoli, spirulena, chlorella and many others. This is what I did here and it tastes… heavenly!
  • Drink this is the morning on an empty stomach if you want the full benefits of it and a quick absorption in the blood.
  • Oh, and give this magic drink to your children before they take off to school! They will be fit and concentrated and love the taste because it is very sweet.

My body is tingling now and my mind is clear. (I drank the green version while I was writing). The effect of this booster is almost immediately. It only takes five minutes to feel your blood pump. So get those young Thai coconuts, grow your grass, juice your greens and get in tune with your body!

Sources: David Wolfe “Superfoods” and my own experiences.

Smooth Health

Your Green Breakfast

The best way to start your day is make some fresh vegetable juice or a smooth smoothie. Your body has to wake up in the morning and is taking its time until about noon to process your meals of the day before. During morning you are releasing eventual toxins and waste. So if you are not feeling great, look back for a second and think of what you ate yesterday. Try to avoid these energy blocks next time.
All these lovely greens are the best way to do this. Moreover you will have ‘eaten’ more vegetables and fruit than you would on a normal day. You can make this most nutritious breakfast in no time. With a large blender -about 1,5 to 2 quarts of volume- you still have a few glasses to take with you to work, or to feed whoever is around and give them the best start for their day as well.
Dishes are done as quickly; just rinse under running water and you can close the door behind you without leaving any mess.

Green smoothies make miracles happen for your general health, both physically and mentally. I will write more about the benefits soon. But first I want to seduce you with this very simple and easy recipe. It’s the ideal smoothie that makes beginners ask for more and well, you can have more because this is enough for a whole bottle extra. If you have a small blender, just fill it up completely. Making another one is done in a minute.

Your first smoothies are usual very sweet. You need a bit time to adjust to new tastes and your body to the large amount of greens it is receiving all of a sudden. If you have some trouble with the green taste, then add more sweet fruit until you really like it. The only rule in this game is: make your smoothies real yummy, totally to your very own taste. Gradually add more vegetables than fruit until you are used to the pureness of greens. Your body will very quickly start asking for more, a feeling that will surprise you. This means you are on the right track to health and ready for new, stronger combinations with wild edibles.

A good tip is: always have frozen fruit in your freezer. Don’t throw out overripe bananas, but break them into pieces and freeze them in a zip bag, same with mango, pineapple, berries… Using frozen fruit in summer is just lovely and you don’t have to add ice anymore. Also you can make the most delicious ice sorbet in a minute when you are craving sweet. But this is for a next post.

You will find this recipe in my FREE eBook “Raw For 3 Days!”

To receive this eBook, join my email list and I will send you the link where you can download it.

Your daily health in a bottle. Bon appetite!