Sneaky Smoothies

Story time: Years ago, I used to work for this very small tech company, where the chief trait of all the employees was they all really wanted to be working somewhere else. Not just at another tech company, but in a wildly different field altogether. One of our best project managers really dreamed of being a Ukrainian translator. Another worked at a spa on the weekends, and was gearing up to open her own. One of our programmers was trying to break into the comic-writing business, and another eventually left to become a personal trainer. We were a motley crew united by our need for a day job.

Anyway, that programmer who wanted to be a personal trainer was a bit of a health nut, as you can imagine. He always brought his lunch from home and drank these nasty-looking concoctions in a big insulated thermos. One day I joked about how I could easily be as muscular as he was, if only I drank a protein shake every day like he did. He informed me that it wasn’t a protein shake, it was just a plain old smoothie. (He preferred his protein in bar form, apparently, but that’s beside the point.) I accused him of being a liar (very politely, of course,) since the number one rule of smoothies in my world is they have to taste good, and I could only assume that his tasted like it looked–which is to say, gross.

“Au contraire!” he cried. Actually, I think he just said, “No, seriously, taste it.” And he was right! It tasted just like a regular smoothie. Fruity and frothy and delicious. “It’s only ugly because I put greens in it, but you can’t taste them at all.”

Greens, huh? Huh. Shortly after that, he left to embark on his personal training career, and I went to go have a baby. Haven’t heard from him since. But his weird greens-in-smoothies notion stuck with me, and I ended up trying to make my own during those days when I desperately needed healthy stuff I could eat with one hand while nursing a baby.

I failed miserably. What came out of my blender was nothing but a smoothie with coarsely chopped salad in it, no matter how hard I tried. I abandoned the idea and moved on with my life.

But then! A reader recently alerted me to another awesome GFCF cooking blog called Whole Life Nutrition. One of her signature items is the “green smoothie,” which as you may have guessed is just a smoothie with greens in it like my old coworker used to make. And while reading her writeup about them, I realized the key mistake I’d made with my misguided attempts years ago.

See, a regular blender just can’t cut it, so to speak. What you need is an immersion blender. There is actually a commercial-grade blender out there that can get the job done, but it’s a little pricey. I’ll shell out $180 for a professional waffle-maker, but a $400 blender crosses the line for me. Plus, an immersion blender is great for soups too.

This one came with a handy little blending cup, but any tallish container will work. I cram mine full of as many greens as I can fit, and then add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of juice.

The less juice you can manage to use, the smoother it will blend. See how there’s no choppy leaves left, only green puree? Immersion blender, baby.

Use whatever fruit you want for your main smoothie ingredients. I’m a fan of the classics, like strawberry-banana. If you’re going to freeze your own bananas, by the way, make sure you peel them first. Frozen peel does not come off easily, and peeled bananas won’t go brown in the freezer.

A cup of frozen strawberries, and we’re ready to…

Pour in our green concoction! Doesn’t that look appetizing? No? Oh, but it will taste wonderful, I promise you. My computer-programmer-turned-personal-trainer friend would never lie to you.

Sure, it’s not so pretty after it’s all blended together. Red strawberries + green lettuce = yucky brown. But there are a few things you can do to get your kids over the visual hump. First, you can put it in a plastic cup with a lid and a straw, or even one of those opaque water bottles. Or, you can use a dark fruit like blueberry or blackberry, and that will mostly overwhelm the green.

Or finally, you can embrace the green. Mine had some red leaf lettuce mixed in, so my green was already a little muted. But a blend of pure romaine, or arugula for example, will give you a really vibrant green color. Pair that with only very pale smoothie ingredients, like bananas, apples, pears, green grapes, pineapple, or coconut milk yogurt, and your final product will be so green that it enters the realm of fun. Call it a Ghost Slime smoothie for Halloween, or a Leprechaun Smoothie for St. Patrick’s Day. Once they taste it, it’s in the bag, because I’m telling you, you absolutely cannot taste the veggies one bit.

Happy Eating!

Sneaky Smoothies

1-2 cups packed greens
3/4 cup fruit juice or coconut milk yogurt
1-2 cups frozen fruit