Green Smoothies Rule !!!
Here are some simple Green Smoothie ideas. Use your imagination and use whatever you’ve got in the fridge. Remember fruit that is in season and ripe will be the sweetest, so get to know the produce guy or gal. They can help you learn about some of the greens you’ve never heard of, let alone thought you’d ever eat and which fruits are at their peak of yumminess. Use what’s in season, it’ll be magnifique!! Always remember to rotate your greens!!! And it’s ok to mix them together.
With a conventional blender you’ll need to cut the greens/fruit into smaller pieces and periodically press things down towards the blades. With a high-speed blender (like a Blendtec or Vitamix) this is usually not necessarily. Add more water as desired and more or less fruit to sweeten to your liking. (you can also use dates or agave to sweeten – remember to take the pits out of the dates, the blender will hate those). The more you enjoy Green Smoothies, the more greens your body will crave and the less fruit you’ll need to sweeten it. A 60% greens to 40% fruit is a nice ratio. Use your imagination, pretty soon, you’ll be an expert and you’ll have your own favorites.
Oh and folks have asked – “I heard you weren’t supposed to mix vegetables and fruit?”. We aren’t using “vegetables” we’re using “greens” in our smoothies. That’s the leafy green frilly stuff that grows above ground or is at the top of the vegetables (like beet greens). Big difference !!
Note: You might want to remove the stems from the greens, especially the harder ones. Save them for juicing if you have a juicer or compost them.
And now, here’s the recipes:
Add about 1 cup of water in the bottom of your blender to get the blades rotating easily
Start adding fruit then greens
Pack it in, turn it on and GO !!
It's that easy. ENJOY !!
Name of the game – mix and match fruits and greens the way you like them. There is something to be said for not mixing sweet and acidic fruits (that pesky food combining thing) but to begin with, I’d just experiment, see what you like and how you feel and go from there.
Remember to always have ripe fruit around - frozen will do, this way you can add more if it's not sweet enough. Frozen bananas or peaches work really well for masking the taste of those really bitter greens such as kale, dandelion, collard or parsley.
Take a look at the end of the recipes for some other addition ideas to give your smoothie that extra punch.
3 Collard Greens leaves
1 peach
1 mango
1 banana
1-2 cups water
6 kale leaves
1 peach
1 apple
Coconut water
5 chard leaves (really big ones)
1 peach
2 bananas
1-2 cups water
5 cups spinach (1 bag)
1 -2 pears
1-2 cups water
Dandelion greens (very bitter and hot)
2 peaches
Water
Some ideas to add: chia seeds, Vitamineral Greens, seaweed, flax seed (ground or soaked), cod liver oil 2xweek
Note: Coconut water frozen into ice cube trays is a wonderful addition
If you’d like to read more about Green Smoothies check out one of our favorite books from one of our “Sheroes”
Green for Life – by Victoria Boutenko
