green smoothie variations

What you see in the picture above is not a glass of sludge. It's a green smoothie. If you're not familiar with green smoothies, they are smoothies that are green. Ha. Ha. Whew. But really, green smoothies are smoothies that incorporate greens (spinach,collard, chard, etc) as well as fruit and other ingredients, and they're a really big deal in the raw food and healthy eating worlds.

I am by no means a raw food person, but I do like to eat healthy, so I started making green smoothies (almost exclusively with spinach) about a year and a half ago. The idea is that you get all of the nutritional goodness of greens quickly and easily, and apparently the nutrients are easier for our bodies to digest when they're blended. I drink green smoothies a couple of times a week, usually following this basic recipe:

Green Smoothie

1 banana

1 1/2 cups of almond milk

1 scoop of vanilla-flavored protein powder 

1 handful of fresh spinach

2-3 handfuls of fresh or frozen berries 

1. Put the banana and the spinach in the blender, then add the milk, berries and powder.

2. Blend.

3. Drink.

There are endless variations on this, but I pretty much always use a banana, the powder, and the greens. If you're freaked out by the grayish greenish color, you can always use a frozen berries mix and that will make the drink more purple/palatable. The great thing about this version is that, if you make one of these in the morning, you get 2 full servings of fruit, 1 serving of vegetables and some protein right away. I'm obsessed with getting protein in the morning, so these work really well for me because they're nutritious and incredibly easy to make. 

Sometimes I use peaches, pineapple, mangoes, or apples in the smoothie...I used fresh blueberries in the one pictured here, but I usually use frozen fruit because it doesn't go bad and because it makes the smoothie really cool and refreshing. It's good if you throw in a few cucumber slices, as well, or occasionally I'll use greek yogurt instead of the protein powder.

I've also used water or orange juice in place of the almond milk; many green smoothie recipes recommend apple juice, which you could totally try, but I have a strange aversion to apple juice which I think is actually a holdover from preschool (is that weird to share?). 

Other ingredient suggestions:

-fresh mint

-fresh ginger, grated

-soymilk

-carrot juice

-honey

-lemon zest

-cinnamon

-beet greens

Do you drink green smoothies? Would you drink green smoothies? If you would and if you do, what's your favorite combination of ingredients? The recipe above works well for me, but I'm always looking for suggestions.