Sunday, September 11, 2011

Kalalu in my cart. or don't ask a whimpy blender to do the job.

I got the idea into my head to start doing green smoothies. Green smoothies, for the uninitiated, are blender drinks with greens disguised by fruits, blended in (usually) a really strong blender.

I have an Oster blender that is good for the spinach/banana/melon variety of green smoothie, but once I tried to get out of my comfort zone I had some problems. At the vegetable stand, the greens looked tired and hot, except for these pretty greens marked kalalu. No, I'd never heard of them either, but I did need to do something besides spinach everyday. I knew I wasn't ready for kale or collards. The Romaine lettuce produced 3/4 of the container of fiberous foam. Yeah, like that was pleasant to drink. Thank you Osterizer.

But I found out that kalalu, or callaloo, or calalu; is the Jamaican equivalent of spinach. Maybe, but it was so darn tough that I had flecks of the stuff settling to the bottom of my glass almost immediately. And it tasted like St. Augustine grass smells when mowed.

So I ordered the Vitamix. That was a week ago and I haven't even been notified that it's shipped.

I had a lot of  kalalu, so I cooked the rest like spinach: put wet greens on top of sauted onions and garlic and steam until soft. They were still tough. Like collards.

Me and spinach, we are still real good buddies. He's a softie, what can I say?