Monday, September 6, 2010

Healthy and Tasty Greens

For my birthday, I received one of the best gifts ever! This beauty:

A Vitamix! We found her second hand on Craigslist and I am in love. It is a blender with 2 peak horsepower and makes beautiful green smoothies. It is such a great way to get veggies in our diets and I am so excited to quadruple my veggie intake! (Or more.) I have known for a long time that I needed to increase the amount of vegetables I eat, but usually could only bring myself to get 1 or 2 in per day at most.

Right now I have 6 jars in my fridge. A couple for my mom, a couple for Jake, and a couple for me. I make Jake's with a lot more fruit, some yogurt and less veggies so that he will drink them. You can barely taste the greens! I could make them with a little less, and you wouldn't be able to taste them at all. Really! Hopefully, he will get used to the taste and I'll be able to add even more greens.

Aren't these pretty?

The bright green one was the first one I've made where I felt like I had to write the recipe down. I have just been throwing in whatever sounded good together, including kale, parsley, spinach, carrots and carrot tops, strawberries, blueberries, apples, etc. They have all been good, but this one is my favorite so far. If you are going to make green smoothies, you can tailor them to your own tastes - you can use lots of fruit, you can make savory smoothies with only veggies and maybe a tomato... whatever your heart desires. I don't like it too sweet - smoothies that are all fruit are way too sweet for me, but adding some fruit in with the greens makes it delicious.

Pretty Bright Green Smoothie

1 to 1 1/2 C. water

1/2 small to medium head of romaine

2 large stalks of celery

3 large handfuls of spinach

1 frozen banana

About 12 oz pineapple chunks (I used canned because it was all I had, but fresh would be fantastic.)

9 comments:

Kathi said...

I am LOVING it!! I can't say that I eat 4 times as many greens now because andything times zero is zero so that doesn't work. But I definitely need this!!!
Beautiful!

Jana said...

I don't like a ton of greens in my smoothies, but still very yum!!! :)

Suz said...

Wow, at first I thought, oh barf! But now I'm thinking you just might have to make one for me! : )

Braden Bell said...

That does look nutritious-not sure how I feel about drinking vegetables, but it would be much better than the junk I normally eat!

Sara said...

Wow! You're so healthy.
I should give your recipe a try.
I've never thought of putting a head of lettuce in my smoothie.

mistyeiz said...

hi there! :) thanks for stopping by my blog. n i've replied u there coz i wasnt sure where to post it here. :P

mistyeiz @ stitch2stitch.net

gfe--gluten free easily said...

Great find! Now I'll be looking on Craigslist for one myself. Love my green smoothies and sometimes the old blender just doesn't cut it. ;-) Your jars of goodness look great! Did you check out today's Gluten-Free Holiday post? I think you'll be very interested. It's at my blog today. Check it out. :-)

Shirley

Ricki said...

Hi Natalie,

Congrats--you WON a copy of Ali and Tom's cookbook, The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen from the giveaway on my blog last week! Please email me at dietdessertdogs AT gmail DOT com with your full name and mailing address so that Amy can get the book out to you asap! :D --Ricki

Kristen said...

Very impressive and cool that Jake drinks them too. Very pretty. Miss you tons and send hugs.