I jumped back on the green smoothie band wagon again earlier this month. Okay well, I never really fell off but I was not making them as much as a used to… probably the cold weather. But my smoothie love has been reborn. I have one each morning and my oldest son usually makes one for himself later in the day as well. My son likes to mix it up and try different ingredients for each one… my basic recipe stays the same usually… 3 cups of spinach, a small handful of frozen strawberries, a ripe banana, a carrot, wheatgrass powder, and water. Sometimes I go crazy and add a few frozen blueberries and end up with a green smoothie that looks less and green and more like mud (see above). It’s all good.
Green smoothies mean more energy throughout the day, smoother/plumper skin, better digestion, and of course fruits and veggies in the diet. I pack a nice portion of each right as the day starts. When I started drinking them daily again 7 pounds melted off in a week and for whatever reason my hikes picked up speed and I started running again. I used to run all the time but haven’t since I was in my late teens, early twenties. Yesterday my husband, youngest son, and I all went for a 2 mile run in the park, alongside a gorgeous frozen creek. We didn’t run all of it… we were with a 5 year old, but it was so nice and refreshing to run again.
Anyway my green smoothies have been such a powerful thing in my life. I credit them with getting me through cancer and I see them as more miraculous with each passing day. I used to have a SERIOUS problem eating my veggies. Green smoothies turned that around and kind of made me crave veggies in general… smoothie or not.
Here is some of my smoothie gear…
A high power blender results in a perfectly smooth drink each and every time. I prefer my Vita-Mix but it has a very nice back-up… the Blendtec… which I use more for raw food recipes… like these raw chocolate cookies.
For every smoothie I also usually use…
Berry flavored Amazing Grass Wheatgrass Powder. LOVE this stuff. I keep it in the fridge and try to make sure I never run out!
Filtered water…
Glass straws and wide mouth jars. I prefer to drink out of wide mouth canning jars… the whole quart sized jar is filled to the brim each morning. I also prefer to drink smoothies out of a straw but don’t want to use plastic… hence the glass straws. I have plain ones as well as ones with decorative colored accents at the end. I also use a glass straw case made of bamboo when I need to take a straw with me someplace… like a restaurant. Its pretty nifty!
By far my favorite book about the miracle that is the green smoothie is Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko. Here is a highlight of my review on it:
They eat hardly any meat but yet would you call chimps or gorillas wimpy??? No, they get ample protein from plants and we can too. We could technically eat 1-2 pounds of plain leafy greens (Kale, Romaine, Spinach, etc) every day but who wants to? I sure don’t…unless I mix them up with some fruit and make a green smoothie. I can easily down a pound of Kale if I put it in smoothies and drink it throughout the day. The problem isn’t that we can’t get the protein from plant sources, the problem is that we aren’t willing or able to eat enough of it most times to GET that protein. Green smoothies though have solved this problem for many people though, including a lot of raw foodies. Consider too that animal proteins are extremely hard for our bodies to digest making it likely that much of the protein will be useless to us and you can see why I think plant based proteins win out every time.
Have you jumped on the green smoothie bandwagon yet?
