Smoothie Master

I am the master smoothie maker.  Well, in my 4 year old's eyes I am.  Daddy's smoothies aren't quite the same (or so I have heard) so smoothie creation has been delegated to me.

While we are far from perfect on the whole and healthy food front, I do work really hard on keeping us free from all the icky chemicals, hormones, sugars and who-knows-what that is in the current U.S. food supply.  This means our smoothies are choc full of greens, fruit, healthy fat and zero sugar or dairy (I'll write about being dairy free some other time).

Our basic smoothie formula is probably pretty similar to a lot of yours, but my bedheaded assistant thought it would be fun to share ours with the world wide web.  Here's a typical Becker smoothie:

Full fat coconut milk (a third to a half of a can)

Lots and lots of fresh organic spinach (its worth the few extra cents to get organic greens since they are on the dirty dozen list). We use anywhere from 3 to 6 cups depending on how much we want to drink.  Spinach is what we use for volume rather than fruit.

Something frozen (in our house that's usually the fruit).  Right now we buy a tropical fruit blend from Costco that is already chopped and frozen.  I don't buy organic because most of the fruits in it were thick skinned (meaning less grody stuff gets to the fruit).  We also often have a bag of broken up frozen bananas in the freezer.  I pick these up from the damaged section at the grocery store for super cheap. We usually use 1-2 cups of fruit.  I try to keep it reigned in so we're not starting out with a ton of sweetness in the morning.

I then finish it off with a quarter or half of avocado, a half cup or so of water and once and a while a splash of vanilla.

Then it's time to blend! This is the Elli's favorite part because she's all about controlling the buttons.  

Once you start blending you'll know whether or not you'll need to add something.

If it's pulling away toward the sides, it's too thick and you'll need to add water.

If it's too runny add more spinach or frozen fruit or a fresh banana.  If its too small add more spinach.

The next step is to have your fuzzy-haired-sleepy-eyed officials do a taste check.  They'll let you know if its hitting the mark. 

 Today our smoothie lacked some flavor and sweetness so we added a banana and viola perfection!  Other days we might add a spoonful of almond butter or fresh berries.

This particular combo isn't the prettiest color, but it is definitely yummy!  This batch makes about 4 and 1/2 decent sized servings.  Plate it with a few boiled eggs and breakfast is done!