Sweet Green Smoothie

Remember when you first got your turbo blender (probably for Christmas) and you pinned all those smoothie recipes on Pinterest and you were like, "I'm going to drink smoothies all the time" and you bought a whole bunch of fruits and vegetables and you felt so healthy and cool? What happened?

This smoothie helps me get back to that. This is my go-to smoothie. To be fair, it's actually my handsome husband's recipe. And since what's "his is mine" I like to think of this as my go-to green smoothie (see how I did that?). It's my go-to because it's easy, delicious, healthy, and I never seem to get tired of it. One of the things that makes this smoothie easy is that I get all of the ingredients from Costco and most of the fruit is frozen.

When it comes to making smoothies, easy is a must for me. If it's not easy, forget it, I'll just eat the fruit. Forget the smoothie. Bye.

Picking locally grown fresh organic fruits and vegetables at their peak of ripeness is a great plan, and I'm not knocking that at all. But my daily schedule doesn't allow for that most days ever. So what I love about this smoothie is that all I have to do is grab my frozen strawberries and mangoes from the deep freezer, pull the spinach and kale out of the fridge, peel an orange, and I'm all set.

By the way, this is my easy method of peeling an orange. For when you don't have time to grow your fingernails long enough to peel it the old fashioned way.

I use my Vitamix 5200 to make this smoothie. If you make a lot of smoothies the Vitamix is a wise investment. I highly recommend it. I also use the Vitamix to make baby food purees for my baby girl. This beast of a machine pulverizes all of your ingredients into a perfectly smooth smoothie, and it just makes the whole process so much easier. And like I said, easy is a must for my smoothies. But this smoothie can be made in any food processor, just follow the manufacturuer's directions.

Coconut water versus filtered drinking water...well the coconut water has tons of nutritional benefits. If you don't care for the taste of coconut water, I highly doubt that you will taste it in this smoothie. Your taste buds will think you just used regular old water, but your body will be able to enjoy the benefits of the potassium-powerhouse, hydrating, wonderful coconut water. If you don't have coconut water (which you can also pick up for a good price at Costco), don't let that stop you from making this smoothie. I never let it stop me!

Drink this smoothie for breakfast, as a snack, with lunch, with dinner, or whenever you want. I used to pour it in my blender bottle and drink it on the way to work. To prevent the ingredients from separating and to prevent the smoothie from becoming warm, drink it relatively quickly, in about 30 minutes or less. If this yields too much smoothie for you, just divide the recipe in half to make half the amount.

Sweet Green Smoothie

Yield: about 3 1/2 cups

2 large handfuls of fresh spinach

1 large handfuls of fresh baby kale

1 orange, peeled and quartered

1 cup frozen strawberries

1 cup frozen mango chunks

1 cup coconut water or filtered drinking water

Put water and loosely packed greens into the Vitamix and pulverize. Add the orange quarters and pulverize. Add the frozen mangoes and pulverize. Then add the frozen strawberries and pulverize. Add more water if needed. If you are using a machine other than the Vitamix please follow the manufacturer's directions for best results (and so that you don't break your machine!).