Seeing Green

I always find myself promising to eat more veggies. I go to the store, buy a cart full of healthy veggies...and then they rot in my fridge. I don't know why I do it. I have such good intentions but when it comes time to actually EAT them, it's just....eew.

If you're like me I may have a helpful solution for you: SMOOTHIES! I mean, who doesn't love Jamba Juice? The only bag thing is they have a surprisingly high amount of sugar and calories (which totally defeats the purpose). 

Are you ready for this...and I apologize in advance for totally ruining this for you but one 28oz Razzmatazz (my favorite) is almost ONE HALF CUP of sugar. A HALF of a cup. Let's all take a minute to go into our kitchen, pull out the measuring cup and really just take it in. 

That is a ridiculous amount of sugar to be consuming in a meal, let alone in one day. So how do we fix this? Homemade smoothies of course. I have one recipe that I LOVE and even got my man to drink it, and then say it was delicious! I have a few steps to explain first...but I promise it is definitely worth the prep.

In A Dream Green Smoothie Recipe:

First, I bought this ginormous box of Organic Baby Spinach. I buy it at Vons, but your local grocery store should have something similar. 

I always have an issue with not finishing it, so I came up with a genius idea to preserve it for a LONG time: blend and freeze! It's super quick and really simple. I just threw all of it in my amazing Ninja blender with a teeny bit of water (just to help it move around better) and let it liquify!

Next is the crazy part...pour it all into an ice cube tray. I only had one tray so I filled them up to the top and it filled up one full tray. I recommend doing half-size cubes to fill about 2 trays to make it go a little farther....but its still enough for 16 smoothies. At $5 for 16 thats only .31 cents of spinach in each smoothie!

Now just throw that bad boy in the freezer. When they're nice and frozen, just pop one out and throw it in the smoothie mix. 

As far as the rest of the smoothie, I use the 16 oz single serve cup that came with my Ninja. I toss in one spinach cube, about 8 small frozen strawberries, a small handful of mixed frozen berries, 1/4 cup cucumber (it really ads a crisp refreshing surprise) and fill the cup halfway with my favorite natural orange juice. I know OJ has more sugar than some would want to add, so you can switch it out for any juice or even almond milk. You can see my cup here pre-orange juice. 

Another trick you can use that I love is to chop your cucumber into bite size pieces and pre-freeze them! Just like the spinach, they will last way longer and you don't have to worry about using it all at once. 

I hope my "secrets" help you find a healthier and more natural alternative for getting your fruits and veggies. Smoothies have been noted to be a better alternative to getting  fruits and veggies than juicing since juicing extracts all of the pulp (which holds almost all of the nutrients).  I figure if I don't eat them, at least I'll drink them in a yummy smoothie!