Summer is the Season of Colorful Foods!
Keep meals interesting, try new greens, fruits, and vegetables!
There is so much research about the healing power of color in our plant foods. All those colorful pigments have many powerful healing nutrients and eating the rainbow is a great strategy for daily fruits and vegetables! The foundational of eating all those colors is that plant foods have so much to offer including vitamins and minerals, fiber as well as their colorful compounds. They provide so much healing and well-being in our bodies. As summer is in full season now this this is a perfect time to seek out new sources for those great colorful vegetables. Find ways to add more plant foods by planting a small garden in your yard or use containers, grow herbs in a window garden, join a CSA or seek out your local farmer’s market. Eating fresh local food is the perfect way to source those colorful plant foods.
Here are some tips help add more vegetables every day:
1. Try some new greens in your salad; be creative with texture and color.
2. Using the rainbow as a reference, notice how many colorful plants you can eat in one day. Kids love to match colors from the rainbow to their foods, you can make a game out of it!
3. Add vegetables to breakfast: spinach, carrot, tomatoes are all great side dishes for eggs and other breakfast foods.
This is a delicious smoothie recipe that features a rainbow of colorful plant foods:
Rainbow Smoothie*
Makes ≈ 2- 8-10 oz. servings
½ cup (cold) green tea
1 cup hemp or almond milk (unsweetened)
1-2 tablespoons chia seeds, whole or ground
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon ginger (dried) or . teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon maple syrup or 1 teaspoon stevia
½ cup (no sugar added) frozen blueberries
½ cup (no sugar added) frozen strawberries
½ cup (no sugar added) frozen mangoes
1 cup packed baby spinach
*Add ¼ to ½ cup ice to increase thickness if desired
Add prepared green tea, hemp or almond milk to blender. Then add the rest of the ingredients in the
order listed ending with baby spinach. Blend at very low speed until ingredients are mixed then gradually
