Green smoothies

I just tried my hand at making green smoothies (smoothies with green veg in them). I had read about these lots, how wonderfully nutritious and actually palatable they are. We were pleasantly surprised. I cheated a little on the first one (meaning I sweetened it some), but the second time around---no sugar added. This is what I did:

first smoothie:
a little more than 1 cup orange juice (100% juice)
3 big handfuls of spinach
(blend this first)
strawberries, frozen then thawed a little, , a huge handful???
1 mango, cut up
3 TBS sugar
blend all and drink up, it was really delicious

second smoothie:
a little less than 1 cup orange juice
3 big handfuls of spinach (probably 3-4 small salads' worth)
watermelon, a regular size bowl full ???? slightly frozen
1 mango, cut up, chilled
NO EXTRA SUGAR!!!
This was not as good as the first, but still quite good.

Drinking a salad, so gooood! give it a try. Sophia doesn't really like it, I think it may be the texture, we will keep trying.

I will paste here all about green smoothies from the website passionatehomemaking.com, and here is the link to the same post on green smoothies, I paste just for your convenience. Obviously I made some changes, I think I used mostly spinach, or maybe 50greens/50 fruit. I also chose the juice as my liquid, the coconut milk here is super sweet, but I will try it sometime. I just used what I had so I definitely could work with it and make it even more nutrient rich. But wow! they are yummy!

More than you wanted to know about green smoothies:
(again, this is not from me)

Did you know that through one green smoothie you can con­sume 5-8 serv­ings of fruits and veg­eta­bles? Did you also know that eating green smooth­ies is one of the eas­i­est way to digest the full nutri­ents of fruits and vegetables?

Green smooth­ies are a won­der­ful alter­na­tive, as apposed to juices, of absorb­ing the full potential by retain­ing the entire whole form of the fruit/vegetable, thus receiv­ing all the fiber. They can assist in boost­ing energy, build­ing your immune system, detox­ing impu­ri­ties, and loos­ing weight. Greens are rich in mag­ne­sium and alka­line min­er­als like cal­cium and are superb in their Omega-3 unsat­u­rated fat con­tent. Believe it or not, greens are one of the rich­est sources of protein.

The best com­bi­na­tion is a bal­ance of 40% greens to 60% fruits. Keep the greens varied as well. Spinach is our favorite, in addi­tion to kale. Other options include: celery, chard, romaine, alfalfa, pars­ley, beet greens, and col­lard greens.

I have found you can make a green smoothie out of pretty much any fruit and greens combination!

Here is how I start. Combine:

I have found it eas­i­est with a tra­di­tional blender to com­bine the greens first in order to get them real smooth. This would not be nec­es­sary with a Vita-​Mix, but with a stan­dard blender com­bin­ing all the ingre­di­ents at once usu­ally leaves you with green clumps.

1 1/2 cups of liq­uids (I usu­ally use a com­bi­na­tion of water, coconut milk, and kefir)

3 oz or more fresh greens, which is approx­i­mately half a bag or 3 large hand­fuls (spinach or kale are best!) -start with smaller quan­ti­ties and work you way up!

2-3 Tbsp orange juice con­cen­trate, optional (this is a more frugal alter­na­tive than using pre-​mixed juices - it stretches the juice further)

After these ingre­di­ents are thor­oughly blended, you can add an assort­ment of fruit.

Here are our favorite additions:

1/2-1 cup Frozen straw­ber­ries or rasp­ber­ries

1 Banana

1/2 cup Frozen Blue­ber­ries

1/4 cup Frozen Pineap­ple

2-3 Frozen Peach slices

I have also used canned pears on occa­sion as well.

Blend and add a little stevia or honey to sweeten and any addi­tional boosters.

Addi­tional boosters:

Ground flax seeds

Ground pump­kin seeds

Coconut oil