Meet Marcia Smart: Cooking Instructor and Food Writer

Marcia Smart is a cooking instructor, recipe developer and food writer who wants to help you make good, simple meals for your family and friends. She craves food that's seasonal and delicious and wants to share it with you. A California girl living in a Houston world with her husband and three children.

Organic and Delicious Greens Grow Year Round in the Houston Garden

One of the magical things about gardening in Houston is the fact that organic and delicious greens grow year round here. In the winter time, sweet lettuces thrive as well as kale, mustards, and spinach.

But even in the warmer spring and fall seasons, longer lasting greens like kale and swiss chard continue to grow and produce loads of harvests week after week.

And if well watered and tended, kale will even grow through the hot summer of Houston, especially if grown under the shade of larger fruiting plants like okra or eggplant.

This means that a daily green smoothie from your own Houston garden is not only possible year round but also so much more nutritious and delicious than getting these greens from the store.

Marcia Smart Started Her Rooted Garden Kitchen Garden in 2017

Way back in 2017, Rooted Garden worked with Marcia Smart to create a kitchen garden situated in her backyard to help inspire her and her local and online cooking classes.

Since fresh and organic herbs, culinary flowers, and fresh greens are an essential part of Marcia’s recipes, it was important to her to have a kitchen garden full of ready to harvest ingredients right outside her back door.

In even a small space, Rooted Garden was able to add 50 square feet of growing space for Marcia Smart’s garden, enabling her to grow hundreds of greens, lots of edible flowers and a year round supply of fresh herbs.

Marcia Smart Grows Greens and Herbs Year Round in Her Houston Garden to Inspire Her Seasonal Recipes

A quick scroll through Marcia Smart’s recipes, and you’ll see that Marcia incorporates lots of herbs into her dishes, from chives, sage and oregano to chamomile flowers and rosemary.

With a kitchen garden, Marcia is able to dry herbs to use later in her dishes or just head out to the garden and cut some fresh whenever she needs them.

When the garden is full and growing wild, Marcia may even bring her Cooking School students out to the garden to cut a little of their own before following her step by step to create a new dish in class.

Garden Kale or Spinach from Your Houston Garden is the Foundational Ingredient for a Daily Green Smoothie

The essential ingredient for a green smoothie is a green!

And our favorites for the green smoothie are kale and spinach.

Kale is a staple in our Houston gardens and can grow year round.

Spinach is a more treasured specialty that grows in the winter in Houston. Planted in late fall, spinach will start producing in November and grow through February and possibly March, depending on the temps as spring arrives.

With spinach in the winter and kale throughout the year, it really is possible to head out to the garden 365 days a year to create the base for your green smoothie.

And when you’re harvesting greens fresh from the garden, your smoothie becomes as nutritional as you can get-as the leaves are most packed with their vitamins and minerals while they’re still growing on the stems.

Step 1: Mix Garden Kale & Water in a High Speed Blender to Make a Green Smoothie

Nicole learned the secret to having a delicious garden green smoothie years ago from Jen Hansard of Simple Green Smoothies. The secret is: blending the greens first!

By doing this step first, all the other steps are easier and the texture of the smoothie is more digestible and delicious. Be sure to check out Simple Green Smoothies and their MANY recipes for delicious green drinks!

The first step to creating a delicious garden green smoothie is to completely blend the green leaves with water.

Nicole Burke notes that for her daily green smoothie, she adds equal parts water and greens to her Vitamix blender and then blends them together for 30 seconds to 1 minute.

The goal is to see a ‘green liquid’ with no solid particles before moving on to the next step of making your garden green smoothie.

To do this, begin on a medium blending setting and then slowly move the dial up until the greens are so blended that no solid leaves or leaf particles appear in the blender.

Step 2: Add Frozen Fruit to Your Garden Green Smoothie

Adding fruit is optional when creating a Garden Green Smoothie, but Nicole and Marcia Smart both do so in order to make the drink more appealing, both to them and to their kids.

Nicole recommends placing a frozen banana in the smoothie along with 3/4 cup of frozen peaches. If you’re wanting a lower sugar count in the smoothie but still want some added sweetness, Nicole recommends baking a sweet potato, peeling it and then freezing it and using that instead of the banana.

Choose fruits that are lower in sugar to keep the calorie count down if that’s your goal.

But if antioxidants and certain vitamins are your goal, Marcia and Nicole both recommend using frozen dark cherries as an added sweetener.

Marcia Smart notes that frozen cherries are full of antioxidants and cancer fighters and will just plain ‘make you feel good!’

Nicole notes that using dark cherries can make the smoothie turn dark red or even purple-perfectly disguising the ‘green’ part of the green smoothie and making it 90% more likely that her kids will drink the whole thing without even knowing they’re getting their vegetables!

Step 3: Add Avocado or Other Healthy Fats to Your Daily Green Smoothie

In order to make the smoothie more filling, Nicole and Marcia both suggest adding an avocado for healthy fats in the smoothie.

You can opt to use 1/2 or a whole avocado to the blender and blend on a medium speed until the mixture is even in texture and the smoothie turns to a creamy consistency.

Nicole notes that adding the avocado keeps her full longer throughout the day and Marcia notes the importance of healthy fats in our diets.

(Fat is a good thing, especially when it’s plant based!)

Book a Consult

Step 4: Add Seeds or Nuts Like Pumpkin or Chia to Your Daily Green Smoothie

Finally, Nicole and Marcia both add seeds and nuts to their daily garden green smoothies with seeds like chia, pumpkin or even Brazil nuts.

These nuts and seeds add a lot of fiber to the smoothie and also some additional fat and healthy oils.

Marcia noted that chia seeds add a lot of fiber and Nicole noted that pumpkin seeds tend to help regulate her digestive tract.

Marcia also had the genius idea of adding one brazil nut to the smoothie to get the daily dose of selenium in your smoothie.

She also explained that she adds a heaping tablespoon of frozen cauliflower in order to get a few more veggies into the smoothie, but in a way that’s completely undetectable to the taste buds-her kids’ included!

We knew Marcia was smart, but this idea was GENIUS!

Learn More about Marcia Smart’s Online Cooking School

Marcia Smart teaches students in Houston to meal plan, set up their kitchen for success and enjoy family meals again.

But she also has an online kitchen school that any one can join.

Learn more about Marcia Smart’s Smart in the Kitchen School below and use code RG50 to sign up for her annual membership and save $50 before April 1.

Learn More About Smart in the Kitchen School

Step 5: Blend Once More, Pour and Enjoy Your Garden Green Smoothie

Once you’ve added all these delicious ingredients to the smoothie, blend once more to be sure all the greens, fruit, fats and seeds are an even consistency.

Then, pull out a glass and fill it up!

Nicole explained that she has her first 10 ounces of green smoothie as she’s preparing breakfasts for her kids and then has a second glass around mid morning.

Both Marcia and Nicole are moms as well as business owners, so finding a way to fill up on healthy vegetables and fruits during the busy days can be a challenge. Having the routine of a daily garden green smoothie can help ensure that no matter what happens after noon, both of these women gave their body a big dose of vitamins, minerals, water, healthy fats and fiber and energy!

Great ideas, motivation and encouragement don’t just come out of thin air for these two women-they need healthy routines to keep them going on a daily basis and the daily garden green smoothie is one of those habits that works.

Love this recipe? Check out Simple Green Smoothies for loads more garden inspired recipes you can try this season.

Let Us Create a Houston Garden for You to Grow Your Own Greens

Ready for your own smoothie garden?

We’d love to help. Our raised bed kitchen gardens are planted with loads of greens-enough for you to start harvesting and making your own garden green smoothies this spring.

Our garden installation process begins with a Garden Consult. And we’d love to meet with you in your own space this month to design a garden that can grow greens and so much more this coming season.

We’re now booking spring garden consults and would love to meet you in your own space soon.

Click below to learn more about our Garden Consults and book yours this week.