Go Green

Sadie and I just finished week two of Enchanted Chameleon's Green Smoothie Challenge and we feel great! No plans to stop drinking green smoothies anytime soon. Not sure if it will continue to be part of my daily routine, but hopefully I'll continue to have at least 3-5 smoothies per week. What a perfect way to make sure I'm getting all the vitamins and minerals I need from greens.

I've gotten a lot of questions about the smoothies since my last post and figured I would answer some of them here. Most of this information was passed along to me by Suzanne as part of my participation in the challenge.

Green Smoothies are made up of 3 things: 1 - 2 Cups of Water; 40% Green Leaves and 60% Fruit.

The greens that I used during this two week period were: red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, rainbow chard, kale, spinach, and collard greens. The fruit I used was whatever suited my fancy that morning: apple, pear, banana, blueberries, strawberries, pineapple, mango, lemon, tangerine, orange.

I assembled my smoothies the way Suzanne shows in this video. I started with a couple ice cubes, 2 cups of filtered water, a couple big handfuls of greens, and blended until smooth. Then added my fruit and blended again until I got a smooth consistency.

I also experimented with adding ginger, but found that it didn't blend as well and left stringy bits in my smoothie...not so lovely. If I grated the ginger with a microplaner first, I had better luck.

Suzanne provides these links for more information:

• See the link "Ode To Green Smoothie" for awesome information and a few delicious recipes.
• Preview a chapter of Green Smoothie Revolution
• Green Smoothie Recipes You can review the recipes and pick a few that you would like. Suzanne recommends not keeping produce for more than a couple of days at a time.
• Or you can check out Suzanne's recipes under Green Smoothies on her website