We’ve been green smoothie drinkers for a few years. I would say I’ve enjoyed 80-90% of our smoothie combinations. Andrew would be closer to 50%. The kids drink whatever we give them a lot of the time (at least a little bit), but not all the time. I figure a mostly good smoothie isn’t worth sharing.
But this smoothie is a winner. Every single one of us has been drinking it daily for the last two weeks. We can’t get enough.
A note about blenders. We used a $30 walmart blender for years. We even drank green smoothies made in them for about a year. I thought it was a totally fine way to make smoothies and it wouldn’t be worth a more expensive purchase (insanely frugal graduate student family that we are).
Then two things happened two years ago: c. diff and the discovery of refurbished blendtec blenders. Sold for $279 and a 7 year warranty. Best. Purchase. Ever. Seriously we say that every day as we are using it for the second or third time.
I recommend making this in a high power blender. I’ve never tried it in the $30 variety – but don’t let that deter you. It is that good!
Blend until greens are completely pulverized and no longer resemble leaves (we use the “smoothie” button):
- 1 pint of kefir (a little more than 2 cups). You can use milk/non-dairy milk/water, but I recommend kefir for gut/immune system health and flavor.
- 2-3 T flax seeds. We buy ours at Walmart or Aldis.
- Roughly four cups/handfuls of spinach (frozen spinach pictured so it is much more compact). Usually I put in the fruit and then stuff as much spinach in the blender as I possibly can.
- 2 oranges, peeled. I cut the skin off of both ends and then slice it off around the outside.
- 2 ripe bananas, peeled
Add frozen pineapples and mangoes and blend with “ice crush”. Or pulse until the pieces are smaller and then blend until smooth. We froze our fruit when it was on sale, but I bet a tropical frozen fruit blend would do the trick.
This smoothie makes the perfect amount for our family of four: a tall cup for me, a mug for Andrew, and two squeeze pouches for the kids.
Enjoy!
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Tell me about your keifer situation- is there a specific brand you buy, and where do you get it from? Also, where are your kids’ squeeze pouches from?
I make my own kefir so that I know they are full of live probiotics – also we’ve shared some with people who have been buying it at the store and they said the homemade kind is waaaaaay better. I got my kefir grains from a friend (if you know someone who makes kefir they can give you some grains to get started – they multiply indefinitely). You can buy them from Cultures for Health and they also have a fantastic free ebook and other resources to get you started.
I got my smoothie pouches from Amazon. I don’t know that I’d recommend this kind that we got because they don’t stand up by themselves and the spout is big so the smoothies can just pour out. I only recently needed to stop helping Nathan. My friend said she got some silicon pouches from Amazon that solved all of the annoyances of mine.