Hey guys, this is Heather from healthyveganrecipes.net. Today, I’ going to show you my green smoothie
recipe – something that I make pretty much everyday for Phil and I.
A lot of you have been asking me what I eat on a regular basis during the day. I usually
show you dinner, and some of those dinners are actually made for lunch. I’ve also shown
you breakfast which is often oats or grains with some seeds and maybe some fruit.
One thing I haven’t shown you is my green smoothie recipe. Pretty much all nutrition
experts or health experts agree that getting more greens into your diet is a good thing.
We pretty much all do with more greens and the easiest way to get them into your diet
is by getting them into a smoothie.
What you can do here is put them in with fruit. If any of you is concern about food combining,
greens combine well with anything, including fruits. Most people look at fruits as being
kept on its own when they’re thinking about strict food combining, but you can add greens
and it’s still super easy to digest.
So, what I will show you is the technique of making a green smoothie because there are
a lot of recipes out there that put different fruits together and stuff like that. I think
its great to experiments with different fruits and see what you like.
But, to be honest, I pretty much just throw in some fruits in the blender, some greens
and let it go. I don’t worry too much about getting different combinations and making
cool flavors and stuff, because Phil and I include spirulina in our greens smoothies.
If you ever tried spirulina, it has a pretty intense flavor. It pretty much take over any
fruit you put in there anyways, so I figure why bother putting something cool and I’m
not going to taste anyway.
The thing you want to do to start – it takes us a few times to get the hang on this because
we don’t have vitamix, which a lot of people that makes smoothies used. A vitamix is awesome
because it breaks down the fibers in the plants much more so than a regular blender like this,
but vitamix cost about 400 bucks.
So, if you’re just getting started and you want to see if you like this technique of
eating greens, just go for a normal bender, they’re like 30 bucks and you can start
and see if you like it. And if you really want to get into it you might want to get
a vitamix – so this, see how it goes.
We are going to start by adding some water. The one I use is filtered water, most city
drinking water has chlorine and in bald water basically comes from tap water anyways, so
filter your water to get rid of the chlorine.
And then to the water, the first thing you want to add is the fruit because that would
be the base for adding the greens and whatever other stuff you want to add in there.
If you do the greens first, it doesn’t go so well. So, to the water I added a banana
and an apple. This is going to be a smoothie for Phil and I, and I just use one apple and
one banana but you can use more fruit at the beginning to make it sweeter, and as you get
used to green smoothies, you can reduce the amount of fruit.
I always question my decision to buy bananas since I live in Canada and especially when
its winter, but the thing about smoothie is you need something kindda gooey to stick things
together. I’ve tried making smoothies without banana, what happens is the water and the
fiber separates.
So, you need something to kindda bring it together. Bananas work, avocados work, but
they’re also not native to Canada. The other thing you could try is maybe like a coconut
milk, or nut milk or something like that. Coconuts if course are not native to Canada,
but like a cashew milk or an almond milk, something like that.
You can play around and see what works for you, but I say, one banana a day and its all
about it. So, give this a blend – the green I use in the winter and even in the summer,
but in the winter they’re easy to grow yourself or sprout.
Phil is in charge of the sprouting. We got some clover in here, and I’ll grab a big
handful, I like lots of sprouts, and these ones are alfalfa. You can see, he’s got
two different sprouting methods, this sprouter that has a thing inside with drainage or you
can just use a mason jar, and you have to make sure that it gets drained properly.
Sprouts, these sprouts anyway, have very little flavor. We have another type the brassica
blend and that’s a little more intense. With these blend, once I throw a lot in, if
you have something that’s more harsh, you can also throw in things like lettuce or spinach.
But, they can get pretty expensive in the winter. It’s great in the summer if you
grow your own. And then to this, I’m going to add a spoonful if spirulina powder – that’s
going to make it super green, and then I use a hemp protein powder.
You don’t need to add a protein powder but we just like to have a little bit extra to
our diet. I happen to have right now some aloe vera juice, which I think is pretty cool.
It helps cleanse and support all you body’s function, so I’m just going to add a bunch
of that in there.
The last thing I’m going to add is some lemon juice. You can use some fresh lemons
if you like – the reason I’m adding this is to counter the flavor of the spirulina.
If you don’t have the spirulina in there, you probably don’t need lemon juice.
But I found, through trial and error, that without the lemon juice, I just can’t handle
the spirulina taste. So, put the lid back on, give this a blend. Phil always likes me
to warn him when I make loud blender noise.
They will mix up pretty quickly but if you leave it a little bit longer on high, it will
break up, if there are any chunkier kinds of things in here. Parsley is one that I like
to add in here quite often and it doesn’t break up too easily.
Cucumber is another great one to add in here, celery, anything light, green juicy is a great
addition. And then, all you got to do is to drink it. When you’re first making them,
you might want to take a taste pouring out if you need to add something and make it sweeter,
whatever.
I got things pretty much down now, so I know exactly how much of everything I like, and
what I added was one soup-spoon, its not quite like a tablespoon, its like two tablespoon
of lemon juice for one spirulina spoonful and that’s for two people.
So, enjoy you green smoothie and experiments with different kinds of things to put in there.
I’ll have this green smoothie recipe posted at healthyveganrecipes.net. This is one of
the best parts of my day, it makes me feel so energize.
If you want some other tips on increasing your energy, you can head over to healthyeatingstartshere.com/success
where I set some lessons for guys, so you can learn about energy and a whole bunch of
other nutrition topics.