Yummy green smoothie with baby spinach leaves

On Thursday and Friday, I followed the same recipe:

*1-1/2 cups of Odwalla Superfood
*1 banana
*1 apple
*6-7 frozen strawberries
*A couple of handfuls of baby spinach leaves. 

I blended everything until it was really smooth, and it tasted great! No little pieces of straw to pull off my tongue. On Thursday, after drinking nearly a quart of this concoction before going to work, I had the strangest experience. I never felt the need to get my afternoon or evening cup of coffee for an energy boost. I had good energy and no mental cobwebs the rest of the day. I have never ever gone a whole day on just one cup of coffee. On Friday, however, I had a low-grade headache and was back to drinking my requisite cups of coffee. The only difference between Thursday's green smoothie and Friday's green smoothie was that I added even more spinach to Friday's smoothie, and it still tasted great and had a smooth consistency.

It's Saturday evening already, and I probably won't have a smoothie at all today, but I have been drinking some of the Odwalla Superfood without adding anything extra. Today we had an AT&T service representative at our house most of the afternoon doing a U-verse installation, and I was out working in the garage, so it just didn't happen. But there's always tomorrow!!

I have a friend in the East Bay who is also experimenting with smoothies. Here is what she tried for her very first smoothie experience:

*1 fuji apple
*1/2 banana
*1 zucchini
*small bunch collard greens
*1/2 cucumber
*about 1/2 cup water

And for her second smoothie experience:

*1 apple
*1/2 banana
*carrots
*2 zucchini

I hope these recipes and initial experiences will have you whipping out and revving up your blenders in no time!

Smoothie Concoction #2 -- the Midweek Smoothie

I have a friend in Wisconsin who says that the mere sight, perhaps even the mere thought, of something green and thick to drink makes her gag. MJ would have been truly disgusted by this evening's concoction because it was beyond the green of most salad greens -- more like a dark olive green or an Army green. It's almost brown. Think heavy swamp muck and that about describes the shade and consistency.

So what was in this evening's concoction? As with the first one I made, I started with some Odwalla Superfood (about 1-1/2 cups) and then added a bunch of organic spring mix greens (several kinds of baby lettuce, red and green chard, radicchio, arugula, mizuna [never heard of this before], etc.), a large handful of sugar snap peas, a sliced-up apple, and six frozen strawberries. It tastes really good; the only drawback are the membranous strings from the pods of the sugar snap peas (at least that's where I think they're coming from) which resemble pieces of straw. I suppose a super duper blender would tear those strings apart and blend them into the smoothie without a moment's thought, but our 10-speed Osterizer isn't quite up to the task. However, it blended everything else -- greens, snap peas, apple, and frozen strawberries -- quite nicely. So drinking this particular smoothie requires the additional step of removing what feel like bits of straw from the tongue after each big sip of smoothie. 

Quite a few people have green smoothie recipes as well as other recipes for other types of smoothies on their websites and blogs. Recipes for some delicious sounding smoothies (with a variety of colors) can be found over at Kristine's Squidoo page, aptly entitled, "Green Smoothies."

Yes, I think in the future (she said while continuing to pick pieces of "straw" off her tongue), I will leave out the sugar snap peas -- at least until we get a super duper BlendTec Total Blender.

My First Green Smoothie Concoction

Recently I went back to one of my favorite books on nutrition, Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live (2003). And then I went to his website to do some more reading and eventually got to his blog tab where I discovered a link to a really fun blog by a gal in Colorado who is writing about all the recipes she is trying from one of Dr. Fuhrman's books. She and her husband are trying all the recipes and rating them. She mentioned a recipe for a smoothie and then I was off and running again, reading about hi-tech blenders like VitaMix and BlendTec and watching Matt Monarch and team rate different top of the line blenders on a YouTube video. I would really, really, really like to have a top of the line blender for making green smoothies, but they do cost a pretty penny and we do have our trusty 10-speed Osterizer blender that has served us faithfully for many years.

I had a small epiphany when I was at Safeway this evening looking for frozen berries. I saw frozen chopped greens!! Collard greens! Mustard greens! Holy mama, Winston! We can hold off on the hi-tech, 300 mph blender and use ye old faithful standby, the trusty Osterizer, for now. I figure if I start using the blender that we currently have on a regular basis, perhaps by the time my birthday rolls around, DH will be willing to invest in a super duper blender. I don't mind smoothies that I have to chew a bit. I bought a half-gallon jug of Odwalla Superfood, the green stuff with lots of fruits, a variety of grasses, sprouts, spirulina,  Jerusalem artichoke and healthful ingredients like these to use as the base for my first at-home green smoothie concoction. I added a banana, an apple, some frozen mustard and collard greens, some dry coconut from Trader Joe's, a spoonful of flax seed, and six frozen strawberries. It looked totally funky but tasted good.

Trader Joe's used to carry a delicious pond scum looking green smoothie drink with almond milk, bananas, and all sorts of greens. I drank it often a few years back when I was working at the animal shelter, but the product itself didn't catch on with most of the TJ crowd, so eventually it got pulled from their shelves. I don't even remember the name of this drink anymore.

The Green Smoothie Girl has a terrific video to show smoothie novices how to throw together a delicious green smoothie using a (sigh) top of the line BlendTec Total Blender. Someday...