Green Smoothies

 Green smoothies may look absolutely disgusting, but the taste will surprise you!  My two and a half year old son loves them so much that we call them “ice cream”.  One time, I had one sitting on the counter while I walked away and when I came back he had gotten it down and was drinking it as fast as he could because he thought he got into something tasty that he wasn’t supposed to have! 

While there are many different recipes and variations, this has been my favorite so far.  Feel free to browse around for other recipes, or throw your own together!

Ingredients:

2 cups water

A few large handfuls of spinach

2 apples

1 orange (or 3 clementines if you have those instead)

2 bananas

First, add the two cups of water to your blender and then fill to the top with spinach.  Blend until smooth and then fill to the top again with spinach.  Blend until the spinach mixture appears smooth, and then blend some more for good measure.  You don’t want a smoothie with pieces of leaves in it!  Next, add the peeled and cored apples, peeled orange and peeled bananas.  Blend until smooth.  Serve right away if you just can’t wait, or put in the fridge for 30 minutes to get your green smoothie nice and cold.  Another great idea is to put in ice cube trays, stick a cut up straw in each cube and freeze, then serve later as popsicles!

*It is best for all of your fruits and vegetables to be organic, but if you are limited in organic choices (in my small town, I’m lucky if I’m able to get even half of my produce organic), at least make sure the apples and spinach are organic. Apples were rated #1 for being contaminated with the most pesticides and spinach was rated #5 on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list for 2011. 

Wesley loves his "ice cream".

This was the time that he stole my glass off the counter!