Week 9: Discover new plants

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the ninth post in the series when I tried kale for the first time (in a smoothie) and visited the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. Here you will find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

With the start of MLB Spring Training comes an onslaught of visitors over the next two months. For the majority of this week and part of next, J.D. has some friends from college visiting from Wisconsin to catch a few Milwaukee Brewers games. I figured with all the working I'd be doing and entertaining to be had, I wouldn't have much time to try something new this week! So my original goal was to make something with kale. But it just so worked out that we had some down time to explore some place I'd been wanting to see for a very long time: the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. Therefore, it worked out that I was able to knock out two new things this week!

I'll begin with the kale. For my first use of the vegetable, I whipped up a kiwi kale smoothie for breakfast one day. I do plan on trying other applications later this week, but this will have to suffice for now :)

Kale smoothies aren't quite the same thing as spinach smoothies. It was quite an adventurous endeavor; the mixture tasted much "weedier" and did have a bit stronger of a vegetable taste. Good thing I went with my trusty coconut milk; the flavor is much more overpowering (and delicious!) than regular milk, soy milk or almond milk.

Kiwi Kale Smoothie

• 1 kiwi
• 1 c rinsed kale
• 1 banana
• 1/2 c spinach
• 1/2 c frozen papaya & mango
• 1 c coconut milk
• 1 T chia seeds
• water and/or ice for reaching desired consistency

Not only did I enjoy the smoothie for breakfast the other day, but I also rounded out the meal with a Belgian waffle!

Several weeks ago, J.D. made us Belgian waffles with the new machine I got for Christmas. He made a batch of regular and chocolate chip waffles, but ended up making something ridiculous like 12 waffles with the recipe he used. So into the freezer half the batch went for me to enjoy later... much later, as I completely forgot about them until this week.

I guess I should also mention that I made my own chocolate raspberry peanut butter to spread on the waffle. Maybe it's a little mean to hold onto it, but I'll share the recipe in another post later! Trust me, it was to dieeeee for. :)

Now onto the botanical garden!

Luckily the day we had nothing planned, Groupon had an offer that turned out to be cheaper than buy one get one free admission to the Desert Botanical Garden. At $7 a person, it was pretty hard to say no to the gardens, especially when you take into consideration that the weather this week has been in the low 80s.

I enjoyed it, but my one complaint is that most desert flowers are still dead for the winter... if you can imagine, it's still too cold out to support some desert wildlife! They also do a lot of concerts and evening tours of the gardens throughout the spring. I would definitely love to come back and see it again in the future.

I'll leave you now with some pictures from our trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens:

I spotted a rabbit! Can you see him?! :)