Happenings

This is a drink that makes me feel good about starting the day  – packing a serving of fruit, a serving of vegetables, half a serving of whole grains, and a bit of protein and good fat.   You can’t beat the feeling of starting the day with all this good stuff, and that it tastes more like a frozen treat – well, that’s never a bad thing!  🙂

The ingredients may sound a bit odd at first, but this is really good and you should completely try it!  I have changed the process a bit, but credit Iowa Girl Eats with the original recipe.

Green Monster Smoothie Ingredients: one large or 2 small bananas, about 1/2 cup of old fashioned oats, unsweetened soy milk, about 1T almond butter, and half a bag of baby spinach. Ice too, though not pictured.

Yes, the smoothie gets its awesome green color from the addition of baby spinach!  I’ve found that you can’t taste the spinach at all, and it’s important to let the taste of the banana overpower the taste of the almond butter by a bit.  This couldn’t be easier to make.

Break up the bananas and put them in the bottom of the blender.  Add about 1/2 cup (or one handful) of old fashioned oats, and top that with about a tablespoon of almond butter.

At this point, I usually add soy milk to cover about 3/4 of the ingredients.

And then top with half a bag or so of baby spinach.

Blend, blend, blend to allow the banana chunks to be broken up.

Starting to break up the spinach

Getting good and combined!

At this point, add some ice to the mix and keep blending.

Add more ice, or more spinach, or more soy milk until the smoothie has a drinkable consistency.  Then pour into glasses and enjoy!

A trick that we found this week is that these are best while still cold – they taste really yummy when done, but let them sit till they warm up and then the banana/almond butter flavors become a bit more pronounced.  Either way, you can’t taste the spinach at all.   Try one!  I think these would be great for kids, because they’d be more excited about the color and not realize what they are actually eating…

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