Dear Friends,

We are so glad that you enjoyed our previous post with information about the outstanding benefits of pomegranates. Many of you asked exactly how to juice these miraculous fruits. Here is how we do it in my family. You may use any electric citrus juicer. We especially like the CitriStar we bought from Tribest.com because of its powerful motor. Since juicing pomegranates is a bit more complicated than juicing oranges, Valya and I made these photographs for you.

Good tip #1: Choose smaller, dark red ripe pomegranates that yield slightly to the touch.  Cut pomegranate in half.

Good tip #2: Place a plate under the pomegranate to avoid staining your cutting board red forever and to save some extra juice.

When cut correctly, you will be greeted with a beautiful red star.

Begin to juice just like you would juice an orange.

When you get to the seeds hidden in the folds as shown in this picture, tilt the pomegranate so that the ream of the juicer is pointed towards each pocket of seeds.

You will see that is very easy to juice most of the seeds.

To collect every bit of the precious juice, you may grab the seeds and the pulp and squeeze them with your hand.

Freshly squeezed pomegranate juice is often tart in taste. In my family we like to juice an orange or two on top of the pomegranate.

This picture shows a juice made of two pomegranates and three oranges. I like to drink this cocktail every morning during the short pomegranate season

Enjoy!

Love, Victoria

Dear Friends, 

Since August of this year I have been working hard on a surprise project that today, has finally been completed. Apple has just approved my Green Smoothie iPhone Application. If you have an iPhone, you can have instant access to countless green smoothie recipes. What makes my program unique, is the nutrition data that accompanies every ingredient and each recipe. Along with nutritional data, I have included the nutritional highlights of what foods are beneficial for particular health condition. For example, raspberries are associated with colon cancer protective properties, parsley have been shown to inhibit tumor formation in the lungs, and lemons are useful in conditions like colds, flu's, and recurrent ear infections.

It took me five months to compile the scientific information to create this application, and format it in an easily comprehensible manner. All of my nutritional highlights come form the best most trusted sources one of which is http://nutritiondata.self.com/

To make this program esthetically beautiful, and to make the ingredients easy to recognize, I purchased all of the ingredients of each smoothie and hired my good friend and brilliant photographer Robert Petetit to capture artistic images of the produce.

This applications is available for $1.99. This could be a great last minute gift for friends and relatives who have iPhones. To purchase the App go to the iPhone App Store or you can use this link.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/green-smoothies/id409966779?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

For those of you who do not have an iPhone, I have some good news: We in the process of making this application into a website.

Love, Victoria

Dear Friends,

We keep receiving feedback about  Sergei’s video that we posted last month. In the footage he prepared a green smoothie from the wild green called plantain. Then he demonstrated how to apply the mixture to the skin, using his girlfriend Briana as a model.  

 We are delighted that many people tried and loved Sergei’s skin product. Our readers told us that they also used parsley, borage and other greens. Yesterday I received a phone call from a group of ladies who organized a green facial party. One of them spotted lots of green plantain leaves growing in her backyard. Her friends brought the rest of the ingredients, blended them together and applied onto each other’s skin. They kept it on for about ten minutes until it started to dry and became ticklish. Then they washed it off.

 The ladies couldn’t believe how smooth their skin became. One of the women had a persistent rash on her face and after one application of the plantain green smoothie, it instantly disappeared.

 If you would like to watch Sergei’s video and try a green facial yourself, please follow this link

Happy Green Spa Weekend,

Love, Victoria

Dear Friends,

In my family we have been enjoying adding one persimmon per blender while preparing our daily green smoothies. For example today I made my green smoothie out of one pint of strawberries and one bunch of spinach, plus one fuyu persimmon along with 2 cups of water.

This orange fruit improves the texture and improves the overall bouquet of flavors in our smoothies. It is now the season for persimmons so I invite you to take advantage of their many nutritional benefits.  

One amazing nutritional fact about persimmons is provided by USDA trhough their adjacent web site Nutrition Data. According to the scientific research persimmons have an amino acid score of 110 which indicates a complete or high-quality protein.

Persimmons are also high in minerals Calcium, Iron, Phosphorus, and vitamins C and A. Persimmons have been used by traditional Chinese medicine to remedy hiccups. They have been noted to be beneficial for diarrhea, hemorrhiods, lung infections, and asthma.

There are two major types of persimmons:

• Hachiya is the larger variety of persimmon (up to 3 inches in diameter). They are generally heart-shaped, hard and bitter when unripe, but soft, sweet, juicy, and extremely delicious when ripe!
• Fuyu is a smaller variety of persimmon that looks like a tomato. Fuyu appear flatter than Hachiya’s. They maintain their sweetness whether they are soft or hard. Fuyu’s never taste bitter.

 Happy persimmon season to you!

Love, Victoria

In this video, Sergei Boutenko takes you shopping to understand the variety of greens available in a super market. These common greens can and should be used for making green smoothies. Sergei intends to give you some new green smoothie ideas to help add variety to your greens selection.

Here are the greens discussed in this video (in order):

1.) Lettuce
a. green leaf
b. red leaf
c. romaine
d. butter head

2.) Swiss Chard
3.) Dino Kale
4.) Bok Choy
5.) Celery
6.) Carrot Greens
7.) Cilantro

8.) Parsley (common & Italian)
9.) Beat Greens
10.) Green Onions
11.) Arugula
12.) Baby Greens
13.) Spinach
14.) Wheat Grass

15.) Herbs
a. basil
b. mint
c. dill
d. chives
e. sage
f. rosemary
g. thyme

16.) Watercress
17.) Baby Bok Choy