Green smoothie

Due to multiple requests, here is an explanation of the green smoothie.

Last Xmas, aunt Debbie and uncle Steve introduced us to the green smoothie. Essentially, you can use any combination of fruits, vegetables, and greens. We have our own special concoction, which we will include below. It takes about 20 minutes to make - start to finish. Our boys love it, especially through a plastic straw.

A few notes.

Note #1: don't use juice. The beauty of the green smoothie is its naturalness (word? sp?). Adding orange, apple, or any other kind of juice would fill the thing with extra unnecessary sugar. So don't do it.

Note #2: don't use yogurt. Yogurt will double the calorie content of the drink. If you want yogurt for breakfast, eat some yogurt. But don't put it in your green smoothie.

Note #3: you will need 200 or so calories at about 10am (this would be the time to eat the yogurt). Your body can devour the green smoothie, because the raw fruits and vegetables have easily accessible energy. So, drinking the smoothie ups your metabolism (or at least I think so) and makes you hungry. The recipe included below makes two tall glasses of smoothie. Each glass has ~180 calories. That is not enough to keep you going all morning. Kristin supplements the smoothie with a small bowl of cereal; Dave uses grapes and carrots. Either way, you will need some more fuel mid-morning.

Now, the recipe.

5 ice cubes
1 cup of water
1 golden delicious apple (we find it easiest to cut the apple into wedges and then cut the wedges in half)
1 orange (cut off the peel)
2 handfuls of frozen strawberries (Costco or Sams)
2 handfuls of frozen blueberries (Costco or Sams)
1 banana
1/3 of a $1.99 bag of Dole Spinach (or until the drink turns a shade of green)

That's it. Post any questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer. Enjoy.