Green Smoothies: A Tasty Way to Get Your Greens

I’ve mentioned before that we’re getting a ton of greens in our CSA.  On the Cooking Away My CSA group message board, several people have mentioned green smoothies.  I’ve made lots of fruit smoothies, and although the idea of a green smoothie sounds strange, I’ve had Superfood before and thought it delicious.  I decided to go tropical with this one to bring me back to my Hawaii roots.  I realize mango and banana aren’t at all local, but hey, the spinach is fresh picked organic from a farm up the road, so I don’t feel so bad about including two of my favorite fruits.  Green smoothies are incredibly good for you, I got more spinach in one smoothie than I do in a meal.

This recipe made two large glasses of smoothie, and wait until you hear the healthy power punch it delivers.  I used about four cups of spinach, so we’ll say two cups per serving.  That means over 100% your daily dose of vitamin A, 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of protein, and about 10% of your iron and 6% of your calcium.  Add half a mango (per serving) and you get 38% of your daily vitamin C, 2 grams of fiber, and 1/2 gram of protein.  Then a half a banana is another 2 grams of fiber, 1/2 gram of protein, and 10% of our vitamin C, plus tons of potassium and vitamin B6.  Finally a cup of milk has 8 grams of protein, a ton of potassium, calcium and vitamin D.  Now I’m not doing all the math but I was impressed with 9 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, and lots of vitamins.

Then, most importantly, is the taste!  It is so sweet and so good, but it’s all natural sugars.  Yum!  It tastes good for you in a refreshing getting in touch with nature kind of way.  It’s like a salad in a glass!  Eric and I will be drinking a green smoothie at least 3 times a week this summer with all the greens we have.  Neither of us is complaining 🙂  By the way, if you’re not sure how to cut a mango, come back Friday as I’ll teach you a bunch of different ways!

Spinach Mango and Banana Smoothie

Ingredients

4 cups loose fresh spinach
1 mango
1 banana
2 cups milk

Instructions

Puree well in a blender.  Can be served over ice if desired.

Approximate cost/serving: Again, hard to calculate our spinach cost since we’re getting it through our CSA, but mangoes were 2 for $1 and bananas less than 10 cents each.  So I’d say it would probably only cost $3 for a blenderfull or $1.50 per serving.

Vegetarian/Gluten Free: If you’d like to take this from vegetarian to vegan, sub soy or rice milk.  Totally gluten free.

By the way, if you get fresh organic greens unwashed, a salad spinner is  a big help!  It makes it easy to really rinse the dirt out, and helps you spot the critters.  This poor guy was still spinning when I took the basket out.