How to make a Green Smoothie!
Well, we DID IT! (almost!) We missed the last day because we had no greens in the house so it was just a "fruit smoothie" that morning but the next day I was out shopping and picked up greens and fruit to keep making green smoothies...yes, it's now a habit! I just feel like something's missing if I don't have my smoothie! And to celebrate I thought Shelby & I could demonstrate exactly how to make a my favourite green smoothie complete with photos! So, here goes:
1) Gather all the ingredients: The star of the show is of course, the green leafy vegetable! Today we used a lettuce but silverbeet or spinach are also good choices and it's a good idea to mix it up so that you get the variety of nutrition in all the different green leafy vegetables. We also had available frozen bananas, frozen chopped apples and mangoes, strawberries and blueberries. I like to use at least one-two frozen fruits as they make the smoothie so cold and thick.
2) Place 1-2 cups of water (or milk--almond, soy, cows etc, juice or a combination of your choice) in the blender jug and then fill up the jug with washed lettuce leaves roughly torn up. And then BLEND.
3) You have green sludge---looking GREEN!
4) The fun part! We get to add the fruit. I always add at least 1 banana for sweetness then I add one medium sized fruit eg. 1 apple, 1 mango or 1 pear today it was an apple. And I also added a handful of berries since they are so sweet and have a strong flavour which overpowers any leftover "green" taste that the apple and banana didn't cover.
5) Blend, pour and enjoy! As you can see it's not really green that's because the berries are a darker colour than the greens. We made a tropical green smoothie for dinner tonight and that was green because all we added was 2 bananas, 1 mango and 2 passionfruits so no dark fruits to discolour the green but it tasted amazing! Very sweet and slushy like. Hmmmm!
7 comments:
Well, after reading all you had to say about green smoothies I saved up the last few weeks and got a blender.
I started making some smoothies, but I made them with chinese brocolie which I think has a stronger taste than other greens. But it was still okay, I'm going to get some other green vegies to experiment with.
I know what you mean...I can't imagine my day or life without my green smoothies and green juices. They're life changing for so many people!
Have a lovely weekend :)
Kristen's Raw
What about spinach? Do they really get all whirred up without being "stringy"?
Erin--Yes it's best to start small on the greens. Eg start with a couple of leaves and then slowly up the amount. Also, it's good to start on the more milder tasting ones eg oakleaf lettuce etc. Have fun!
Kristen'sraw-Thanks!
Tulipgirl--Haven't noticed any stringyness. I guess if you had a really old/non-strong blender you might have trouble with that but it mostly is just little green lumps. I usually take out the large white ribs on stuff but I haven't had trouble.
tulipgirl-when I say little green lumps I mean something the size of a 5mm square piece of green at most. But that's when I'm looking at the green liquid at the "add the fruit" stage. By the time I've blended the fruit in I don't notice the greens at all.
Thanks for explaining. . . My blender isn't super-powerful, but it is sturdy. I'll have to add some greens in with my pineapple/banana in the morning. As I said elsewhere, since my mouth is achy, I've been living off smoothies. (Oh, and chocolate ice cream!)
Coming back to say. . . while I haven't had a green smoothie yet, this post was very timely. I had some medical issues that resulted in cold fruit/protein smoothies being the only thing I felt like eating for nearly a week. . .
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