Spring Greens Tonic

I guess most folk are roughly the same when it comes to Spring's arrival, even though there can be cold and horrid days a fair way in to the new year I personally feel that once we get past February then all is good.

Even on the cold days it's fantastic to see new shoots appearing, early blossom and  maybe tapping a birch tree for sap. I've taken advantage of a few young and tender shoots to make a few spring tonic variations detailed below. Check that you are OK consuming the ingredients listed...

The first one was just nettle tips and cleavers (with added ginger) in apple juice.

For this one I grated the ginger ginger once peeled.

Roughly chop the greens and then blitz with the ginger.

Add the apple juice and a spoon of runny honey the the sludge which will have a greeny grassy aroma. This one was chugged down with the greens mixed in.

One for the family to have a taste of. This was a slightly bigger amount of of cleavers, nettles and ground ivy.

The ginger was thrown in roughly chopped at the blitzing stage and honey added too. Look at that vibrant colour...What's not to like?! You may notice that this drink has been sieved.

This is what I sieved out. Again, what's not to like...

I decided to try and incorporate the sieved greens into a bannock (rudimentary bread). Whilst being a decent bread once pan cooked, the magic of the apple juice, honey and ginger additions is that they hide the spinach like taste of the greens. I'm not a fan of plain spinach so I didn't finish it, but the 'spinach' and ginger tastes suggest that this could be pimped into a basic Asian curried flat bread with a few additions.

For this one it's all the usual suspects plus the addition of chickweed which is one of my favourite salad ingredients (it reminds me of lambs lettuce). I decided on a shot of the bubbly sludge instead of the drink. 

And the final one. This is more of the above but it's bulked out with some finely blitzed porridge oats which were previously soaked in apple juice the night before. This made a lighter coloured and filling breakfast smoothie.

Try them, the equivalent green healthy drink in the chilled department will set you back a few pounds and some pence.