Grand Green Smoothie Experiment

I started the grand green smoothie experiment a couple of weeks ago. It all started with a natural curiosity to blend carrots and make red vegetable juice (think V8). Well, my blender can't blend vegetables so I started searching for vegetable smoothies. In my search I found a lot of helpful resources, some had affiliate links every time they mentioned Vitamax (a high speed blender). Others had recipes for really big smoothies to use as meal replacers. Since, I'm not in the market for meal replacing, I decided to take all these recipes and make a green smoothie recipe that I can interchange to fit my taste buds.

All green smoothies look the same to me, but here's a one I made.

My experimented consisted of taking my dairy and fruit smoothie recipes and changing proportions to make two types of green smoothies: fruit juice based and milk based. The generic proportions are:

1 handful of greens + 1/2 cup of base liquid + 1/2 cup of fruit (or 1/2 of a banana)

Greens

I'm particularly fond of romaine lettuce. I started blending it after reading some of recipes by Incredible Smoothies. Other greens I've used are cucumber, spinach, and spring mix salad. I've read that you can use kale as the green too, but my grocery store doesn't carry kale.

Base Liquid

I've made some really creamy smoothies using a generic brand of light vanilla soy milk. I've also used 1% and 2% milk too. I haven't had a chance to try unsweetened almond milk, yet but I'm sure it works.

On the other hand, I've made some really juicy smoothies using apple juice as a base. Apples are sweet, they're also a good color to mix. I'm a big fan of unsweetened apple juice as it's not too sweet nor too sour.

Fruit

I want to start out by saying bananas are amazing. Angela, from the Green Monster Movement and Oh She Glows, uses bananas as a main ingredient in her Green Monster smoothies. She uses a whole banana to make a double portion. I just use half and freeze the second half for the next day.

If I'm out of bananas I use other fruit. I've had quite a success with Kiwi-Cucumber smoothies as well as Strawberry-Romaine smoothies. Most fruit will mask the flavor of the greens, the sweeter the fruit the better.

I really like green smoothies. A lot of people claim that these smoothies give you energy and all this other wonderful stuff. But... I like them because they make a handful of greens and a piece of fruit a fun substitution for a whole glass of juice or a soda. They're 100% better than Dr Pepper, and that's a good enough reason for you to give them a try. Give them a try, post a picture and show it to me. Go on your own grand green smoothie experiment and eat some more greens.

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