Your Search for Fruit Smoothie Recipes Starts Here

After my last smoothie post I had several requests for some pictures to show just how much green you can pack into a smoothie. Because I’m making smoothies for 5 people I’m always loading my Vitamix to the very top to ensure there is enough smoothie to go around. This means the traditional, one apple, one handful of spinach type smoothies don’t work well for our family, so I set out to develop some healthy fruit smoothie recipes for our family.

One tip: ALWAYS pack in your greens first. If you’re like me, it’s easy as pie to get my kids to eat enough fruit each day, but eating a wide variety of vegetables, particularly leafy greens, isn’t as easy. By putting my greens in first I can ensure that I get in all the veggies I can get away with before adding the sweet stuff they already love. Lately we’ve been doing a combo of spinach, kale, collard greens, a cucumber and 3 stalks of celery. Once I have those greens loaded to the top I usually add some kefir for my liquid for blending it down. If we’re out of kefir I just use good ol’ water. We just ordered some live kefir grains to culture in raw milk and I’m sure Trent will post about those experiments here soon 🙂

Once the greens are blended down to a liquid you can fill in the remainder with fruit. In the winter we stick with strawberries, blueberries, banana and raisins because we can get those from Costco. In the summer we try to stock up and freeze the abundant produce available, especially Utah peaches (next month, can’t wait!). Our “green” smoothies are rarely green and tend to be brown or purple instead.

If I’m making the smoothies for lunch I usually have some left over to make into popsicles. And yes, when I’m out of popsicle sticks I use plastic knives for a stick 🙂 Right now smoothies and juices are the only way I can get my 2-year-old to happily eat veggies, so it’s not uncommon to have a smoothie for breakfast and a smoothie popsicle for a snack — I’ve got to get nutrition in her somehow!

Anyone else making smoothies for a large family? I’d love to hear your recipes!