The Gospel of the Green Smoothie

So it all started a couple of months ago when I noticed some talk among my Facebook friends about a mysterious thing they called a "green smoothie."

"My kids think that it's not a smoothie unless it has spinach in it," one of them remarked.

Spinach? In a smoothie? Kids? Drinking it? How could such an thing be possible? Was this green smoothie the secret entrance to nutritional nirvana?

My interest was piqued.

I googled "Green Smoothie."

During slow moments in meetings at work, I started peeking at websites about Green Smoothies. I read recipes. I memorized the health benefits. I mulled it over the possibility of making one of my own. For weeks, I let the idea simmer in my mind. I told my family and friends, "I've been thinking a lot about green smoothies."

It sounded like a great idea. Green smoothie advocates say that they find that this is the best way to get your green leafy vegetables in every day, partially because it beats chomping down a plateful of salad, but particularly because the blending breaks the cellulose down somewhat, making it easier for you to digest the plant and absorb the maximum amount of nutrients from its leafy goodness. The leafies also help slow your body's processing of the sugars from the fruits, so you feel fuller, longer, with steadier blood sugar levels after drinking the smoothie. It sounded like a good deal to me.

But I was afraid.

All the recipes I had found online called for fruit, water, and some sort of leafy green vegetable. This did not sound good to me. The people kept claiming it was good, but people also claim that trout is good, so I do not believe people and their culinary lies. I was afraid I would ruin a whole blenderful of precious fruit with the addition of a bunch of leafy greens.

So I finally asked my friend Becca, who has three small children and was involved in the Facebook conversation that triggered my obsession, about how she made hers. And she told me basically everything I'd already read on the internets, except that she said she added orange juice to the mix! The ingenuity! Juice! Not water, your raw-food eating fools! Juice!

So, a few more weeks of mulling, and I finally bought a bag of spinach and a bunch of frozen berries, along with my usual array of snack fruits. And I made my first green smoothie.

It consisted of the following:

5 strawberries
1 cup of frozen blueberries
1 banana
2 cups of spinach
1/4 cup orange juice concentrate
3/4 cup water

And....it was fabulous! Because of the blueberries, it was actually a lovely dark purple hue. And it was delicious-- even the kids liked it. LOVED it, even. I asked Soren if he wanted some and he, having watched with interest while I assembled it, declined. "No, not with that salad in it," he said. But I talked him into a tiny taste...and a tiny taste turned into a cup. And then another cup. So it was like I fed my kids a spinach/fruit salad for breakfast. And they were begging for more!

I pretty much skipped around the rest of the day, buzzing from the burst of nutrition, singing little songs to myself about antioxidants and iron and fiber.

And so I wish to share it with you, my fair readers. Come, come, and partake of the joy of green smoothie goodness, for it is worthwhile and wholesome and will make you so healthy.

(Purple green smoothie-faced baby.)