Go Green Smoothie Girl!

We are loving the Green Smoothie Girl smoothies these days. I just finished reading the Green Smoothies Diet by Robyn Openshaw, which is excellent. Even with all the free information on her website, greensmoothiegirl.com, and all the free videos on You Tube, the book is a must read.

My husband and I started making the green smoothies to increase the greens and vegetables in our diet. Robyn notes that one of her full size adult green smoothies has about 15 servings of vegetables in it.

We already make Kefir smoothies at home several times a week so this was a great next step for us to add more whole foods to our diet. I bought a Vitamix blender at Costco last fall which I use for the smoothies, whole grain waffles and grinding my sprouted whole wheat. The cost of the blender was offset by my being able to toss the ice cream maker and the juicer. I like it better than my juicer because I know that in a smoothie my family is eating the whole vegetable and fruit, rather than just the juice. You save money on produce this way as well.

One of the things I love the most about the Green Smoothie Girl Diet, is that you can grow almost all of the vegetables you use in your smoothies! This year I am adding Kale, Collard Greens, Chard and such to our garden. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

So a few weeks ago when we began our Green Smoothie Girl diet, I made up the green smoothies in the Vitamix. Suddenly there were threee kids lined up around me with their cups out, ready for their smoothies! To get enough smoothie I let the smoothie overflow to about 100 or so ounces. The vitamix will hold it all when the lid is all the way on.

Here is what is in our smoothies:

We fill the vitamix with water up to the 3 cup line.

Add:
3/4 cup frozen broccoli
1 - 2 cups spinach
2 leaves each of Kale, Collard Greens, and Chard
1 whole carrot
several stalks of celery with leaves if possible
6 - 8 whole strawberries (with tops if available)
1 whole pear
1 pink lady apple
1 stem of aloe vera
1/4 of a whole lemon with peel
2 - 3 Tablespoons Agave Nectar
1 -2 bananas

Blend about 1 minute on high until smooth.
Usually the frozen broccoli prevents the need for
ice in our smoothies.