Green Smoothie Catch Up 3 & 4

We are still keeping up with our Green Smoothie experiment. Mondays are always the hardest day as we have a cooked brunch on Sundays...lol. And after the initial shudder, we slip back into the lush green mush. 

Week 4 was interesting as we found, quite by chance,  a particular coconut needed for one of recipes from Victoria Boutenko's Green Smoothie Revolution. 

If I'm honest, I really couldn't taste the coconut in either of it's form..water or the coconut meat. The smoothie also had strawberries and kale and they were the overriding flavours. So Coconut Chameleon maybe isn't one we will be having that often. The second smoothie of the week was Refreshing Cucumber Spinach...lets just say we drank it down very quickly! lol. And Fridays Romintic Mango...tasted ok but sent my sugar levels soaring and then I crashed mid morning and had to have something else. But that's just me as I have a bad relationship with Mango. 

Coconut Chameleon 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)

1 young  coconut, water and meat
2 bananas
1 cup of strawberries
2 cups of greens - kale
1 cup of water

Prep the fruits and veggies and blitz in a blender until smooth.

Refreshing Cucumber Spinach 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)  

1 cucumber 
1 cup of spinach
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp honey
1 sprig of spearmint or 5-7  leaves
2 cups water

Prep the fruits and veggies and blitz in a blender until smooth.

Romintic Mango 2 servings
 (Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)

1 ripe mango
1 cup romaine leaves
1 sprig mint or 5-7 leaves

Prep the fruits and veggies and blitz in a blender until smooth. 

This was probably the hardest week so far but that was more of a taste issue. We fully accept that there are going to be smoothies we don't like...but we will continue on and hope that they are few. lol. 

Week 5  is going to be interesting as we are having smoothies that have elements that both of us will be less than happy to try. But as we are working our way through the recipes we will have to literally suck it up and get on with it! lol. I was very busy yesterday so I gave My Love the book and asked for three recipes for this week. 

Today was Favourite Green Smoothie...and blimey did it make me shudder...it had fresh ginger in so I can see why My Love chose it..but as I'm not a lover of fresh ginger drinks...I struggled. And the texture was quite thick but we are beginning to think this is more to do with our whimpy blender and not the smoothies. 

Tomorrow's is a very fruity smoothie and the only green in it is romaine leaves. My Love does tend to favour the fruit filled ones. So we will see what happens with this one. lol. Oops, the title of this one is Apple Green Smoothie. 

Fridays is the one I am looking forward to least. I Can't Believe It's Green Smoothie....what a title eh? lol. It's a mix of chard, apple, celery, pear and cherry tomatoes. My Love is not a fan of celery at all so I guess that's the balance, eh? lol. I feel like Week 5 is a 'wish me luck' week! lol.  

Favourite Green Smoothie 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)

3-6 large leaves of Kale, keeping the stems except for the hardest inch at the bottom
1 banana
1 apple
1/2" fresh gingerroot
2 cups water

Prep fruits and veggies and blitz until smooth.

Apple Green Smoothie 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)

4 cups romaine leaves
4 fuji apples
1/2 cup dates, pitted
1/4 tsp cinnamon
3 cups of water

Prep fruits and veggies and blitz until smooth. 


I Can't Believe It's Green Smoothie 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)

2 cups of green chard
1-2 sticks of celery
2 cups of cherry tomatoes
1 ripe pear
1 pink lady apple
1 cup of water

Prep fruits and veggies and blitz until smooth

So that's Week 5 and if you are following this and have tried some of the recipes please let me know how you are getting on and what you think? 

~R~

Green Smoothie Catch Up No 2

If you have been following my blog then you will know that My Love and I have been having Green Smoothies for breakfast Monday through Friday. And some of the reactions have been similiar to my sisters on Saturday...one of shock and then followed by a "Yuck..." or "euwww.." lol. To be honest four weeks ago that was our reaction. But not now...we are enjoying the green gunge for breakfast. For reasons that I mentioned on Mondays blog we didn't have them and resorted to cereal and blimey did we miss them..We are so used to the 'lightness' you have with a smoothie breakfast so much so that the cereal felt like a brick sat in our stomaches. 

So Tuesday morning bright and early we welcomed the green gunge and drank every mouthful quite happily. lol. As we are still getting to grips with the whole regime the recipes are still from Victoria Boutenko's wonderful Green Smoothie Revelution. 

There are so many recipes in her book that unfortunately we won't be able to try because of pineapple or mango issues on our part, that I can't recommend this book to you enough. Buy yourself a copy...it's worth every penny. 

P-P-Papaya Smoothie
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)

2 cup of spinach
1 fresh papaya, seeds removed
1 banana
1 cup of water

Prep the veggies/fruits and blitz until smooth in the blender.

Lovely Green Goodness Smoothie
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/Boutenko)

2 bananas
1 Royal Gala apple
1 Bosc pear
1 cup kale
1/4 cup water (My Love needed 2 cups of water...)

Prep veggies/fruits and blitz until smooth in the blender.

Enjoy! ~R~  
    

Green Smoothie Catch Up No 1

There are only so many ways you can photograph a glass of green sludge, isn't there? So with that sentiment I hope you forgive me for not providing photos for the smoothie recipes. 

We are both finding that Green Smoothie breakfasts work very well for us. They are quick and on the whole tasty...and you do experience an energy that lasts right through until you eat your lunch. There are a few books on the subject but for a recipe book I recommend the Victoria Boutenko's Green Smoothie Revolution. 

Last Friday we had the Good Stuff Smoothie which had Romaine/Cos leaves as it's green. It was very different to the others but not awful and by the time I was halfway through it I was enjoying it. My Love seemed to really enjoy this particular one. It's all a matter of your taste buds getting used to a change.

This week we are having Original Raw Family Smoothie Improved which is Kale based. Impeachmint which is spinach based and then on Friday Cantaloupe Parsley Smoothie which just what it says..melon and parsley.

So here are the recipes and I hope you give them a try...~Red~

Good Stuff Smoothie 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revelution V.Boutenko)

2 cup of Romaine
2 apples, peeled
2 pears
1 banana
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 cups of water

Place everything in a blender and blitz until smooth. Serve.  

Original Raw Family Smoothie Improved 4 servings
(Recipe from the Green Smoothie Revolution V.Boutenko)

1 pint/2 cups strawberries fresh or frozen
2 ripe bananas
1 avocado
2 cups of water
4-6 big leaves of kale or 1 bag..stalks removed

Prep and place everything in a blender. Blitz until smooth. Serve.

Impeachment 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution V.Boutenko)

2 ripe peaches or 1 cup of frozen peaches
2 sprigs mint or 10-14 leaves
2 cups spinach
2 cup water

Prep and place everything in the blender. Blitz until smooth. Serve.

Cantaloupe Parlsey Smoothie 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution V.Boutenko)

3 cups cantaloupe, cubed
1 bunch of fresh parsley

Prep and place them in a blender. Blitz until smooth. Serve.

Go on...give them a try. ~Red~
     

Winter Green Smoothie

Now come on...admit it...this looks delicious? lol

Day two of the Green Smoothie experiment and today's smoothie was a Winter Green Smoothie. It sounds far worse than it actually tastes believe me. And please don't worry I won't be posting a daily smoothie as you have to rotate them so tomorrow we'll be having the Parsley Passion Smoothie again and then on Thursday we'll having this very attractive smoothie and then Friday we'll be having a Good Stuff Smoothie. lol. At weekends we'll be having our usual cooked breakfasts and I don't mean the fried bacon and eggs kind. Yuck. I mean Tofu omelette, scramble or fritatas which we love.

This morning's smoothie was quite sweet compared to yesterdays but had a bitter edge so My Love added a banana to it. The recipe was supposed to do 4 servings but that clearly wasn't the case so My Love added more spinach and water to pad it out. It was quite a pleasant drink really and the fact that the berries are frozen made it chilled and that was so much more palatable compared to yesterdays.

So day two done and all's well. And hopefully our viral nasty will disappear faster?

The recipe for this smoothie is from Victoria Boutenko's Green Smoothie Revolution
Winter Green Smoothie Makes 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/V.Boutenko)

1 cup of frozen berries 
2 cups fresh spinach
2 cups of water
1/4 inch fresh ginger, or to taste

1 banana (wasn't on the recipe but was added by My Love)

Place all the ingredients into the blender and blitz until smooth. Enjoy!

NB: To spread this across 4 servings MY Love had to add extra water and spinach.
 

Parsley Passion Smoothie

OMG Green Smoothies have invaded the house! lol

Yes, it's true. I have gone over to the Green Side! lol. And for a very good reason. I picked up a viral nasty a couple of weeks ago and I'm still trying to shake it off. The medical advice of..."it'll pass..eventually!"..really isn't that much good. I always take a long two weeks (if I'm lucky!) to get over viral nasties. But with this one even My Love is having trouble shaking it off. So we started looking around for something we could do to help ourselves...other than keeping away from everyone and 'bag it and bin it' tissue regime. It seems to be a viral that keeps coming back and attacking the chest, throat and energy levels. My Loves research kept coming back to green smoothies as a way of boosting the immune system..mine is shot to pieces hence the reason I get knocked out so bad with virals.

But can I just say...green smoothies!!!!! Urgh. Now I am a lifelong veggie and now vegan but even I struggle with the cold green veggie smoothie idea. I'm not a fan of cold soup either and isn't it almost the same thing? lol

However, I then started to look into the green smoothie regime to find out as much information as I could before we crossed over to the other side. And I kept being lead back to a couple of books on the subject. Finally I gave in and ordered one from Amazon.co.uk Victoria Boutenko's Green Smoothie Revolution
It arrived and I sat and read it cover to cover and decided that although I didn't agree with all her theory....I did get her 'thinking' We accepted that there would be no way we would completely give up cooked food...we are never going to be Raw foodist's. But we could try starting the day with a green smoothie. The book is small but it has many green smoothie recipes...200 in fact so it will a valuable recipe book if nothing else.

So this morning was our first morning on our Green Smoothie experiment. It wasn't as horrific as I had built it up to be in my head. Although I was a little disturbed at My Love's pale face when I was handed my smoothie to drink. It was very green and the smell...interesting but not unpleasant! lol I was doing well until the last mouthful and I must have had that sneaky piece that escapes the blender and to be honest it was a shock. lol. But the taste wasn't too bad. I was grateful for the apple in it to give it that bit of sweetness. Victoria does advise that you start with the smoothies with fruit in them. I can see why...lol

I have to say, that I think I will get to grips with the green smoothie malarky. Although hearing that My Love was still feeling nauseous a few hours later whilst having to sit through a train journey to London, I did feel bad but I have been told that My Love is still 'with' the green smoothie breakfasts... after all it was My Loves idea to try it out...Iol!!

So I shall be posting the green smoothies and sharing with you the outcomes.

Parsley Passion Smoothie Makes 4 servings
(Recipe from Green Smoothie Revolution/V.Boutenko)
1 bunch of fresh parsley
1 cucumber, peeled
1 Fuji Apple
1 ripe banana
2 cups of water

Add everything to the blender and blitz until smooth. Enjoy! lol