We started the green smoothie habit 10+ years ago when we were first married. We’ve come a long way, but only in the past few years have I developed a system that ensures it happens pretty much every single day. I feel strongly about the benefits of starting our day with those nutrients and hate to have days when we don’t get them.
Because of our massive consumption of Adam’s peanut butter, I’ve collected a lot of glass jars –they are perfect, roughly quart-size with straight sides. I will fill these roughly three quarters full with a variety of Costco frozen fruit. Here are some of our favorites:
All tropical blend (this is the mix of pineapple, mango, strawberry and papaya I think)
Half Mixed berries or strawberries and Half pineapple or mango (a lot of combinations here, they are all good!)
I will fill up to eight jars roughly 3/4 full of frozen fruit and keep them in the freezer. Then each night before bed, I will stick one in the refrigerator. This way the fruit has thawed and blends up quickly. If your greens, bananas and fruit are frozen it’s hard to get everything to blend, even with a high-powered blender.
I like to keep my greens and bananas in the freezer so they are always fresh. It can be hard to have bananas perfectly ripe, leafy greens that haven’t turned to mush, etc. So I buy about 6 bags of bananas when I make my big monthly Costco trip. I leave them on the counter until they are starting to get black spots, then peel them, break them into 1-2 inch pieces and freeze them in gallon freezer bags. I also buy about 4 bags of the organic power greens mix and transfer this to freezer bags as well. I have a big freezer in my garage so this keeps me from going to Costco all the time which we all know gets way too expensive.
So, I dump the contents of the jar in the blender and fill the jar about halfway full with filtered water (this is about 2 Cups water), then I add approximately 1 1/2 frozen banana, 2 TBSP flax, chia or hemp seeds and greens to the top of my Blendtec Wildside jar . Blend and enjoy! Add more banana if more sweetness is needed. This makes around 5 cups of smoothie which we divide up between the 6 of us.