Eat Like A Rainbow – Green Smoothies

A couple of years ago, a good friend of ours introduced us to “green smoothies”.  She recommended an interesting book on the topic called “Green Smoothie Revolution“.   The health reasons seemed pretty compelling and we love fresh fruits and vegetables so I decided give it a try.  I must admit, my first few batches were not very appealing.  The taste was sort of bitter and you had to chew the drink to get through the greens.  But I kept trying and eventually got it right!  Now anytime that I find myself with kale or spinach or some other green that we don’t have another use for, I throw it in a blender with some fruit and create a delicious green smoothie.  The trick (especially if you expect your kids to drink it) is to keep the greens to fruit ratio around 1:1.  This also makes it look pretty 🙂

If it still tastes too bitter, just add even more fruit.  Or you could use honey to sweeten it up at the end.  Try not to get too hung up on a specific recipe.  The key is going to be making it taste good or you won’t want to drink it.

Kale is definitely our favorite green to use in our smoothies.  It is SO incredibly good for you and I think it actually gives the smoothie great flavor, too!  Below is a basic recipe that I tend to make a lot, mostly because we always have the fruit ingredients on hand.  We pick our own strawberries at a local farm every summer and freeze them.  We buy the nectarines from a local orchard and can them every summer.  And I cheat and buy the frozen mangos at the grocery store because I don’t know of any local farms that grow mangos but we still love to eat them.  You should make sure that some portion of your recipe contains frozen ingredients in order to get more of a smoothie consistency instead of just juice.  If you are using all fresh ingredients (which is great!),  just add some ice cubes to the bottom of the blender in place of the water or juice in the recipe.

I tend to double the recipe and make two blender-fuls at a time and then freeze half of it for later in the week.  (If you actually read the book that I recommended earlier, you’ll see that freezing a green smoothie is generally frowned upon in the raw world but, when you have 3 small kids and a busy life, frozen and thawed green smoothie is WAY better than no smoothie at all!)

AuthorMaria

[cooked-sharing]

This is what it looks like when it is finished…

Just insert a straw and enjoy 🙂  Oh…and pour some into cups for the kids but make sure that you get your own first because there probably won’t be any left once they get their hands on it!

By the way, the title for this post was inspired by a children’s song that we like.  Check it out!