Green stuff

With Preston doing his "Biggest Loser" thing for work (he is down over 20 pounds! Yay!) I have been trying find ways for all of us to eat healthier.  A friend of mine has been raving to me about the "green smoothies" for a while.  For those who don't know what those are (like I didn't), they are just like regular smoothies, only with green, leafy stuff blended in.  I don't know about you, but I am not a huge fan of green, leafy stuff unless it is smothered in blue cheese dressing.  My kids don't even like it then.  Well, Dax actually really likes salad, but mostly the lettuce kind...none of the kids like spinach to get too near them.  I am always looking for ways to shove more veggies into the kids, so I decided to do some research.

I was surprised at how many people out there are green smoothie believers.  There are the crazies who will tell you that if you have a green smoothie every day you will lose weight, your hair will be shinier, you will get smarter, be happier, have more energy, be better looking, grow two inches and automatically know three foreign languages.  I did discover that there are a couple of green smoothies on the menu at Jamba Juice now, so Preston picked some up one day just to make sure they weren't disgusting.  They were actually really good!  So I decided to give it a try at home.

Disclaimer:  You can't make green smoothies if you have a wussy blender unless you want green stringy stuff in your smoothies and your teeth.  I don't.  You don't. 

Anyway, here is the idea...you take some water, or milk or almond milk or whatever.  Add a bunch of green leafy stuff (spinach and kale in this case) or whatever kind of vegetable you are trying to sneak into your body.  Then you add your yummy stuff...in this case bananas, some mango, some mandarin oranges I stole from the kids, and lots of ice.  And, if you are a "newbie" like me, a little bit some sort of sweetener (sugar, honey, agave, whatever floats your boat). 

After you blend it up, you get a little something that looks like this:

Mmmmm...looks like swamp sludge!  Try not to gag, but it actually tastes great!  I even forgot the sweetener one morning and it still tasted good.  If you add berries like blueberries or blackberries the smoothie is more of a purplish color, but truthfully, the green-ness doesn't bother me at all anymore.  We have added pears, bananas, all sorts of berries, apples, mangoes, pineapple, oranges, whatever we have lying around.  Arden and Corbie both suck this green stuff down like crazy.  Dax was never a big smoothie fan, but his favorite color is green so I had high hopes that would win him over.  So far he isn't a fan.  Oh well.  Preston likes them too, so four out of five ain't bad.

So far, after a couple of weeks, I still don't speak Chinese or Italian.  Also, the magical green smoothies didn't stop me from catching the cold that has been going around our house.  But I do feel a little better knowing that me, Preston and at least two out of the three kids have already eaten a bunch of vegetables and it is only 8:30 in the morning.