Pinned & Did–The MONSTER Edition

This year we’ve been working on improving our health, being good stewards of our children’s health, gaining more energy, etc, etc. In searching Pinterest for healthy recipes, I came across many of these Green Monster smoothie recipes, like this one I pinned about 6 months ago from lindawagner.net. 


Either you think that looks really cool, or you think that looks really gross. I personally thought it looked…intriguing. Could that possibly taste good? A fruit smoothie stuffed with spinach or kale that looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book? Really? Everyone in blogland was raving about how delicious and awesome they were, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I mean, sometimes the emperor really isn’t wearing any clothes, if you know what I mean. Anyway.
I tried several different recipes that I pinned. Most of them seemed to involve these basics: a banana, greek yogurt (which we did NOT like, and that’s probably a good thing, because that stuff is EXPENSIVE, hello!), frozen fruit, a green leafy vegetable, a liquid of some sort, and often ice. They usually didn’t turn out the pretty bright green that you see in the above photo. More like a muddy, brownish, swamp color.
They were pretty tasty, definitely energizing, and definitely healthy! And bonus: the kids LOVED them! But honestly, Adam & I didn’t LOVE them. Until we invented our own recipe. Now we LOVE them too. Here’s how we make ours. You might LOVE our recipe too, or you might say “Ehhh” and come up with your own. But you should definitely try it!
We have 2 variations of the same recipe: one is strawberry, the other is peach.








Peach or Strawberry Green Smoothie:
1 Banana (its helpful to freeze these ahead, since bananas spoil so quickly)


1 container Strawberry or Peach Yogurt (don’t buy sugar-free unless you want something loaded with aspartame and food coloring.)


1-2 cups frozen strawberries or peaches


1 cup ice 


1/2 cup liquid (water works fine, or you can use apple juice, we just use water; for the peach we used orange peach mango juice which was really good)


Stuff the rest of the blender with Spinach or Kale or something similar. (We prefer Spinach over Kale. It blends up really smooth, you can’t taste it, and there are no little leaf particles in the smoothie.)


Blend. Blend. Blend. If it doesn’t blend easily, add a little more liquid.
Serves 2-4. When finished, this fills our blender about 1/2 full, which we split 4 ways.


The peach one comes out a nice,  Dr. Seuss-y green.
We’ve been having them for lunch. I usually have a hard boiled egg with it, for some extra protein, and honestly, it really fills me up. And makes me feel so healthy.


And yes, that is a box of donut holes sitting next to the blender.


Try to pretend you didn’t see that.


Things we have learned while making Monster Smoothies:
1. Greek Yogurt has a strong aftertaste that gives me the shivers. I know, I am so un-trendy.


2. Milk in any form dilutes the fruity flavor, making it bland.


3. Adding Peanut Butter makes it taste like a PB&J sandwhich…I wasn’t a fan.


4. Baby Max does not like the blender and will cry hysterically until its done.
Long story short: these are worth the effort, so try one and see if you don’t like it.

My Pinned & Did grade for Green Monster Smoothies: A+