Favorite Green Smoothie

Yesterday I promised that I would provide you with the recipe for my favorite green smoothie. I like to start the day with this smoothie for a number of reasons.

1) green veggies are calming. In the morning when I have a lot of energy and sometimes anxiety, the green smoothie helps to take off the edge.

2) by starting the day with this drink I know I am already getting the recommended number of fruit and vegetable servings. For people who can't seem to get their veggies in this is a simple and extremely nutritious way to do it.

3) I feel good.

I tried several green smoothies before settling on this one. For me it has just the right amount of fruits and vegetables - it doesn't feel too sweet or too bitter. The ingredients are:


Fruits:
1 apple (be sure to remove the seeds as they can be toxic - thanks for the tip Dennis!)
1 cucumber

Veggies:
3 medium size kale leaves (de-stemmed)
2 small to medium size chard leaves (or lettuce leaves)
1 stalk of celery (without the leaves - leaves make it taste more bitter)
1 handful of parsley

and a little piece of ginger

You can also add spirulina, blue green algae, hemp, maca, any number of super foods. I will get into more of that later.

Then you just put it all into the blender with 2 cups of water and blend. If you have a high speed blender like a VitaMix (can't imagine life without it at this point) it should be no problem. You can also juice all of this but I find blending to be so easy (and easy to clean!) and you get all of the fiber with the fruit and veggies.

All in all it makes a little over a quart. You can drink the whole thing or put some in the fridge for tomorrow.

I am not a huge fan, yet, of raw kale or chard but blending them in a smoothie tastes great.

Below is a picture of the final product. The picture at the top of this post is of the smoothie with my backyard behind it. I like that picture because it shows some of the garden where these veggies are grown.



Enjoy!