Green Smoothie Recipe + Get Motivated Mondays Link Up!

Welcome to the first ever link up party here on Sidetracked Sarah, called Get Motivated Mondays!  I do hope that you plan to join us by sharing your healthy tips and recipes!  I will share more about the rules at the bottom of this post, but first I’d like to talk about the healthful tip that I’ll be sharing today!

Do you like fresh fruit smoothies?  Have you ever tried drinking a green smoothie?  I remember, the first time I heard about it, I was trying to imagine what could taste good about putting spinach into a yummy fruit smoothie.  Wouldn’t that just ruin it?  I was surprised that the answer was a definite no!  You can hardly taste it.  Isn’t that crazy?  The key is, to make sure you use FRESH spinach.  Believe me, cooked spinach does not work (don’t even ask me how I know, lol).  You can also use other fresh greens, but spinach is one of the more mild tasting greens.

A couple of years ago, I took a class that was based around the book 12 Steps to Whole Foods
by Robyn Openshaw.  The 1st of those 12 steps is saying goodbye to stimulant drinks (like coffee and soda) and saying hello to green smoothies.  Robyn says that if you don’t do anything else healthful, you should at least include a green smoothie a day into your diet.  It ups your daily fruit and vegetable content by so much that you get some awesome health benefits!  I never got to a point where I was drinking them daily, but I would drink them every day or two.  I would try to drink a couple glasses full each time I did, if possible.  By doing that, I started dropping weight (and I still ate normally, not limiting much else), had healthier looking skin and my hair was shinier and more healthy looking, too. I’m not sure why I ever got away from it!  It is now time to start drinking theses smoothies again.

So, are you ready to give it a try?  Here is the recipe that I used tonight.  You can make your own variations, just make sure to have enough liquid in the blender so that the spinach will blend easily.

Sidetracked Sarah’s Green Smoothie Recipe

2 oranges
5-10 oz of fresh spinach
1 cup of water
1-2 cups of frozen strawberries
2 frozen bananas

Peel oranges and place in blender.  Blend them up first so that you have lots of juice while blending the greens.  Next, fill up the blender with spinach.  I had bought mine cheap and had frozen it before it went bad.  As long as you freeze it fresh, it can still be used.  The same goes for kale, romaine lettuce, etc.  It wasn’t blending well, so I added a cup of water, to get it all swishing around nicely.  Next, add frozen strawberries and bananas.  Keep adding whatever fruit you want until your blender container is full.  You can keep this in the refrigerator for a couple of days and continue to sip on it.  Mine never lasts.  My kids all line up asking if they can have some green smoothie!

Here are some pictures so you can see exactly what I’m talking about.

• Recipes that help you focus on eating more healthy. (smoothies, raw, low carb, etc.)
• A weekly success story
• Any tips that help you to lose weight
• Ways that you changed your health for the better
• Anything that has to do with healthy living and/or eating.

Please include a link to this linky party in your blog post.  I will pick either my favorite or the readers’ favorite to share next week!  Lets link up!