Smoothie Thursday!
Turn on the TV, pick up a magazine or newspaper and you can’t help but read something about how unhealthy our eating habits have become. More and more people are recognizing that a diet of processed, highly sugared foods are much less than ideal. Adding more veggies and fruits is the number one suggestion for improving our diet!
As we transition to a healthier diet, one of the goals should be to make sure you eat your “good foods” first. The theory being that if you start with the cupcakes, you will fill yourself up and never get around to the healthy foods, depriving your body of the needed nutrients, setting up conditions that can allow weight gain and disease to occur. The easiest way to add those fruits and veggies are green drinks and fruit smoothies.
I drink one for breakfast every morning! I get a great boost with nutrients that energize me. I also get a good start on my servings of fruit or veggies, making sure that those good nutrients are coursing through my blood stream! Recently, I ran out of smoothy ingredients for a couple of days. I noticed a huge difference in energy level, mental clarity and attitude.
Today’s raw food recipe is a great mixture of spinach, carrots, cucumbers and a few more ingredients to make it especially tasty and refreshing!
Good Morning Green Drink
SERVES 2
- 2 cups spinach
- 1 1/2 cups grapes
- 2 carrots
- 1/2 cucumber
- 1/2″ piece of ginger
- 1 stalk celery
- 2 dates
- handful of ice
- 1/2 to 1 cup water
- Combine all ingredients in blender or Vitamix.
- Start with 1/2 cup water and add more to desired thickness.
- Blend until smooth.
Bethany Keenan wrote on June 17, 2012
How many calories are roughly in these? I read online that some green smoothies are around500 calories, thats not right is it?
Susan wrote on June 17, 2012
This smoothie has 110 calories per serving. How many calories a smoothie has completely depends on what ingredients are in it. Cheers!
Kerstin wrote on March 13, 2012
Any thoughts on the food combining questions?? I just discovered your website through a friend and can’t wait to give my Vita Mix a good workout tomorrow!! How do you think silken tofu would be for added protein?
Susan wrote on March 13, 2012
I don’t worry about food combining when doing raw with greens. Also, I can’t comment on the tofu as this is a raw site and tofu is not raw. I would suggest doing some research on soy and deciding based on that. Cheers!
Kelly wrote on February 28, 2012
Thanks! It’s completely delicious, I’m drinking it now! It has such a nice light flavor. I mostly taste cucumber and ginger. I hate vegetables and this is delicious. I’m so excited to drink this every morning. I didn’t have dates so I put a few chunks of pineapple to sweeten it instead. There weren’t any green grapes at the store so I got the red grapes which make the smoothie more brown and gross looking, but also makes it less bitter. Thanks for this awesome recipe :]
Kelly wrote on February 22, 2012
Should the cucumbers be peeled? I know the skins of fruits and vegetables can be the most nutritious, but other times taste horrible.
Susan wrote on February 22, 2012
Kelly, completely optional. If you do use them make sure you have organic. Cheers!
Linda Gillette wrote on February 19, 2012
Hi Susan. What is classified as greens that can be mixed with fruits for a morning green smoothie. I try to follow the proper food combining program so I have stuck to just fruit in a.m. but find that I tend to forget about making a green smoothie later on.
Corinna wrote on January 26, 2012
This looks great, but I’d really like to have more protein for breakfast. Can you suggest something to add to this smoothie that’s high in protein? Eggs and my chocolate protein mix might be kinda gross!
Susan wrote on January 26, 2012
You could try nuts or chia seeds. Cheers!
Erin wrote on August 19, 2011
My one year old sucked this down! I hardly got to taste it myself. 🙂
shanon wrote on November 7, 2010
My parents had a vitamix from 35yrs ago that my sister still uses to this day. I have had mine for 10yrs and use it multiple times a day and especially during canning season as you don’t have to sieve your fruits. Love it for making smoothies! I measured the money issue to my friends purchases of blenders. She almost matched 1/2 of my purchase price of $450.00 with the amount of blenders she burned up with in 6yrs of my owning mine. She now owns a vitamix and we joke that if our houses were burning down… we would forget the scrapbooks and take our vitamixers. Anyhow, I believe that it has been my best appliance purchase yet and is used more than my oven. Good luck!