feel-good morning smoothie [porter]

Feel-good morning smoothie

There are precisely three reasons why I drink this smoothie: 1) I am on a mission to actually meet the recommended daily intake of 5 servings of fruits and vegetables 2) A good friend of mine picked up "juicing" (like with a juicer, not steroids :) ) and reported that she no longer felt tired in the afternoons, could easily go until lunch without being hungry, and no longer felt like a slave to coffee 3) A family friend who is a cancer survivor swears by a similar version of this smoothie.

I make this smoothie usually 2-3 mornings per week and I honestly do feel good.  I feel good about my eating habits.  I feel good that this is the type of food that feeds my body well and therefore gives me more energy for longer.  I feel good that a body that gets the right nutrients enables a healthy immune system.  However, I have zero plans to give up coffee--it tastes so good and has lots of antioxidants--but I no longer crave caffeine and sometimes opt for decaf.

Getting in the habit to buy the ingredients for this smoothie on a regular basis was the hard part.  Not being a fan of letting food go to waste, I had to learn how to buy the right amounts, and, to choosing to buy larger portions to be more economical, I worked into our routine other uses for the same ingredients.

Ingredients:
makes 2 smoothies
1 c apple juice
2 generous handfuls of spinach or kale
1 carrot, chopped or 1 handful baby carrots
1 banana
1 c frozen fruit
1/2 c Greek yogurt
1 squeeze honey
1 lime, juice only

The how to:
In a blender combine juice, spinach and/or kale, and carrot.  Blend until the carrot is chopped well.  Add banana and frozen fruit.  Blend until smooth (may have to use pulse function if you have one).  Add yogurt, honey and lime.  Blend until the yogurt is well incorporated (same color through whole smoothie).  Pour and enjoy!

Side notes:
I use apple juice, but feel free to try other juices.  I will say that I don't like this smoothie as much with orange juice.  Kale is the more antioxidant-packed leaf, but it is more bitter than spinach so I suggest starting with spinach and changing the mix to include kale to your liking.  Spinach is only a 20 cent difference between a small and a large container at my grocer, so I tend to get the large spinach and have it around for salads, too.  I don't get kale very often because we don't have meals that use it often enough to justify the large container.  Again, I hate for food to go bad and I like to meal plan economically!  Our grocer carries carrots that are cut for stir fry for the same price as baby carrots so we get the stir-fry cut bag, well, so we can use them in stir fry, too (see where I'm going with this :) ).  I use fresh banana, but if we have bananas that are about to go bad, I'll cut them up, freeze them on a cookie tray, then put them in Tupperware in the freezer (freezing first on a cookie tray means they are less likely to stick together and you can portion it out later).  Pick any frozen fruit to your liking, but know that mango will give it a grittier texture.  We like blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and peaches.  Recently we started using flavored Greek yogurt (honey and blueberry), so I've been leaving out the raw honey.  I might go back to plain Greek yogurt because the flavored one has a lot of sugar.  I especially like to drink these with a straw.

Phew that was a lot of side note!  Even fiance loves this smoothie and it holds him over to a late lunch on the weekends after dog training class--that's impressive.  Try it this week I tell you!  It's good!

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