Green Smoothie Recipe {and food ramblings}

I grew up eating home cooked meals and enjoying the way dinners and holidays gathered us around a table. Our family always loved eating together, making new recipes and putting in a little extra effort to make a meal special. It’s kind of one of our traditions. Certain recipes belong to certain people. Like my sister carries on the tradition of our Grandma’s yeast rolls. And I’m always the one who makes the sausage cornbread stuffing at Thanksgiving. My mom’s roast is always tastier than the rest of ours. And my dad’s gravy is the best! And my brother’s chocolate chip cookies are famous among the nieces and nephews. Our spoiled childhood gave us particular pallets, which makes us known in these parts as food snobs. The poor in-laws have graciously learned to put up with us….and join in on the yum!

But it wasn’t until motherhood, that I developed a hunger to provide real and whole foods for my family. Nothing extreme. Just good eating that avoids processed foods and embraces the real provisions of our Creator. Over the years, I’ve removed high fructose corn syrup from everything we choose. We avoid food colorings and ingredients we can’t pronounce from our normal daily eating. We’re pretty sure they make us batty! We always buy local organic milk, and we limit how much we consume. Our bread is either homemade or from a local market that makes several options with only the four or five ingredients that should be in bread. Our eggs come from our own ranging chickens, and this year we embarked on our first venture of raising our own meat. My grocery list is not long. I buy the same things every week. And each year, I seem to make another change or two toward healthier eating. {I’m hoping this year’s change is consistently buying spices and sauces from my friend Amy Brown who sells Wildtree products!}

These changes have been good for us but our family determines these food habits, they don’t determine us. Though we feel strongly about them in our regular routine, we don’t enforce them when experiencing the hospitality of others.

Sorry. I’m taking a loooong time to get to the recipe…

One area we haven’t been faithful in is our consumption of vegetables. Like we rarely ate them. Or when did, we over cooked them until they were soft and deplete of nutrients. I absolutely hate food battles with my children. They exhaust me.  So when the idea of green smoothies came up, it really seemed like a great solution to this vegetable hole in our diet.

We’ve consistently consumed green smoothies nearly every day for the last six months. I really believe it’s helped with our cravings, behaviors and moods. We’re sticking with it! Here are some things I’ve learned while figuring out what we like.

1. Coming up with a motive for making them will help you determine what you put in them. Are they for a snack? Just for fun? Or to fill in holes in your diet? We decided our smoothies would consist mostly of fruits and veggies we don’t naturally grab and choose. So grapes, oranges, apples, bananas and strawberries don’t usually end up in the blender because we’re snacking on them all day long anyway.

2. If you’re wanting to offer this to reluctant or skeptical children, I recommend starting out on the sweet side. Maybe no broccoli or kale at first because those have strong flavors. We added maple syrup in the beginning and used more kefir or yogurt than we do now. This kind of won my kids over and they began to trust me with the whole green thing. I slowly cut back on the sweet and increased the green veggies. I believe our taste buds have adjusted and what seems really sweet to us now, probably wouldn’t have seemed so when we first started. If you’re needing to be a little sneaky at first with your little people, you could hide the smoothie in a cup with a lid and a straw that is colored.

3. The key to a good smoothie is determining what consistency you like – thick and creamy, thin and icy? Banana, yogurt, and avocado will thicken, so if you like it thinner, counter balance these with increased ice and juice.

4. Measuring is a little tricky because most of the ingredients are bulky. For example, 2 cups of spinach really isn’t that much because it’s fluffy and takes up so much room in the cup. When you measure, everything is pretty much heaping out of the measuring cup. I don’t measure, but I’ve tried really hard to nail down this recipe in order to share it. Hopefully this gives you a starting point and you can tweek according to your taste.

This recipe makes approximately 4 measured cups. If I’m replacing my lunch with this smoothie, I can nearly drink that entire amount, sometimes in two parts. I’ll pour it into 2 16 oz mason jars and stick one in the fridge while I’m sipping on the other.

Or  this recipe would feed up to 4 children (I have my kids drink about 1 cup of the smoothie each morning, served in this 8oz mason jar)

Or this recipe feeds 1 (16 oz) smoothie for the mama, and 2 (8 oz) smoothies for kids.

Green Smoothie Recipe

1 ½  cups orange juice

½ cup kefir (or yogurt) – we like peach or vanilla kefir

2 cups baby spinach

2 cups kale

½ avocado

¼ cup broccolini (or broccoli)

1 cup fresh pineapple cut in chunks (approx. 10 large bite size chucks)

1 ½  cups frozen peaches or mangoes (I buy at Target)

5 or 6 large ice cubes

additions: a TBS of chia seeds, part of a banana, ¼ cup yogurt, or almond milk (which makes a good dairy free one).

Enjoy the way it tastes and experience the benefits of raw greens! I think you’ll love it.