A Pink Green Smoothie

Right now I'm doing the Conscious Cleanse, according to the book by Jo Schaalman and Jules Peláez. Giving up some of my favorite foods for the cleanse (no dairy, wheat, sugar, etc.) has been quite an experience (for more on this, read my initial post and my updates from day 2 and day 10). I'm starting to add foods back now and that has been an education, for sure! Last night I made brown rice pasta with pesto and veggies, plus corn on the cob, for dinner. After that meal, I felt so bloated and low-energy, I just wanted to crawl into bed. I don't know if it was the corn (which I'd strictly avoided until now), or just the sheer amount of carbs in that meal compared to what my stomach had gotten used to. That pasta with pesto tasted awfully good, and I probably just overdid it.

One of the things from the cleanse that's definitely going to stick with me for life, is the green smoothie. I was so resistant to this idea--even though friends told me you could add quite a bit of green veggies like spinach or kale to a smoothie without tasting it, I thought for sure the idea would put me off my smoothie. My first green smoothie probably had two leaves of lettuce in it. Now I'm totally sold and I don't even care if the color is bright green, I will drink it.

For today, though, I'm going to show you how to make a smoothie that's pink and tastes like strawberries. This is not a recipe from the Conscious Cleanse book, but it follows the pattern I learned from following their recipes for over a week.

Here you can see my solid ingredients, all tossed into the blender. I have a banana on the bottom, about a cup of spinach leaves in the middle, packed down by just over a cup of fresh strawberries.

You could substitute any type of fruit for the strawberries--frozen blueberries or raspberries are some of our favorites. Mango is great, too, but it won't cover up the green color. Also, you don't have to add the banana, but I like to because it thickens up the smoothie and adds some potassium and healthy fat. Even my kid who doesn't like bananas prefers a banana in his smoothie.

To this, I'm going to add 2 cups of liquid. A lot of the Conscious Cleanse recipes just call for water, but when I tried that it tasted like something was missing. I've been using coconut milk from a carton (it's much thinner than the stuff from a can--I have two types in the photo just to show you) but you could use juice or any milk, dairy or non-dairy.

Pour the liquid on top of the ingredients. You could add some honey to sweeten it if you want to, but we think the fruit adds plenty of sweet. We've also been adding a tablespoon of flax seeds, almond butter, or hemp seeds to some of our smoothies, for added protein and omega-3s.

I blend it up on the "puree" setting in my cheap blender. It takes about a minute of blending before all the flecks of green disappear from view. And this is what it looks like all blended up. Pink and beautiful, and so tasty.

We've been drinking these every single morning for breakfast. We change up the fruits and add-ins to get a variety of flavors, and we're nowhere near tired of them yet. It feels great knowing that we're getting a serving of green vegetables before we've even started our day. We will definitely be continuing with the green smoothies for breakfast long after we finish the Cleanse.

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads.