DIY Green Powder How to Use It
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Want to add a boost of nutrition into your foods all year round? Try making your own Green Powder Blend! It’s easy to make and store.
How to make Your Own Green Powder Blend
I’ve had some dried greens sitting on my pantry shelves for quite some time now. While we use them once in a while, they seem to be taking up an awful lot of space and I just don’t tend to use them in their “whole” forms.
I’ve been working on cleaning our my pantry a lot over the past month, making room for things that we need to add and cleaning out items that we don’t use very often. We even did another Pantry Challenge back in January to try and get things used up.
But these dried greens…they just hung out on my shelf!
Here are some of the things that I dried from summertime:
Broccoli Leaves
Carrot Tops
Beet Tops
Kale
Zucchini
Cucumbers
We tend to use quite a bit of the dried zucchini (I shared all about that here). But the other items I was finding a hard time using the entire jar at once.
These are just the greens that I saved and had on hand. Here is a full list of greens that you can dry and use:
Broccoli Leaves
Cabbage Leaves
Cauliflower Leaves
Beet Tops
Turnip Tops
Carrot Tops
Dandelion Leaves
Kale
Pak Choi
Salad Greens
Spinach
Nasturitum
Celery Leaves
Chard
And I’m sure there are plenty more that I’m leaving out!
Let me back up a little bit and give you some context before I show you what I did with these foods.
In the summer, it always seems like greens are in abundance in June and the beginning of July. Way too much for us to eat all at once! To help make the most of these plants, I dried many of the leaves and tops. I posted all about drying plants and herbs here.
I dried all of these greens either by hanging them up to dry or by using a dehydrator to speed along the process. I have the L’Equip Filter Pro Dehydrator from Pleasant Hill Grain and it’s been working wonderfully for me for over 10 years.
Why save the greens?
Broccoli Leaves are high in Vitamin A and contain calcium, folate, vitamin C, iron, vitamin K, fiber, and protein. (Source)
Carrot Tops contain significant amounts of?vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, calcium, and iron. (Source)
Beet Greens are rich in Vitamin K, copper, manganese, iron and calcium. (Source)
Kale is a nutrition superstar due to the amounts of?vitamins A, K, B6 and C, calcium, potassium, copper and manganese it contains. (Source)
And while zucchini and cucumbers technically aren’t “greens” in the sense that we use that word, being fresh fruits and veggies they also have their fair share of nutrition to bring to the table.
Saving greens off of the plants that we are able to not only helps us make the most of the plant that we put all that hard work into growing, but it can provide food and nutrition for our families all year round and help stretch the grocery budget.
How to Use Dried Greens
Since they weren’t getting used much in their whole form, I decided to take all of the greens and blend them together into a super green powder. I made a video while doing this and you can check out what I did to make this green powder in it below!
I’m using my Blendtec Blender to make these greens into a powder. It works great! Any blender should do the trick though if you have a different brand.
But now we exactly do we do with these dried greens?
Some basic ideas are:
Add into scrambled eggs
Add into smoothies
Sprinkle on salads or in your salad dressing
Add to casseroles
Add into pasta dishes
You can add as much or as little of the green powder into your dishes, there is no right or wrong with this! (Just keep in mind that they will add flavor to meals so you may want to be cautious in using large amounts in things like smoothies.)
These recipes on Little House Living would be excellent for adding the green powder into:
Christmas Brunch Casserole Recipe
Simple Cheeseburger Casserole for Supper or Breakfast
Amish Chicken Casserole Recipe
Classic Egg Salad Recipe
Banana Raspberry Blueberry Smoothie Recipe
Really, the sky is the limit to what you can add this green powder to. It’s an excellent nutrient-dense, shelf-stable food to have in your pantry.
Do you make your own green powder? What do you add it in to?
