Lime Green Smoothie

We love smoothies. I used to make them almost every day for breakfast, but then we moved into an apartment and I worried that the sound of the blender would wake up the neighbors in the morning. Plus, Paul and I don't usually get up at the same time during the week so we couldn't share. Normally my smoothies would consist of a banana, a cup of sweetened yogurt (vanilla, strawberry, whatever), some fresh or frozen chopped fruit, and juice to thin it. Yum indeed. This past week I decided to start making smoothies again for lunch, but with added spinach because it's good for ya and you supposedly can't taste it in the finished product. Guess what? You really can't taste it! The smoothie tastes great (I love the lime) and the only indication that it contains spinach is that the smoothie is a frightening shade of olive green and looks like nothing you would ever want to put near your mouth. EVER. For that reason, I decided not to post a photo because my goal here is to encourage people to try my recipes, not send them screaming into the night.

Quick note: You can take a lot of liberties with the recipe and use pretty much any combo of fruit that you want. This week I used frozen chunks of mango, strawberries, and pineapple, but next week I think I will try a berry blend. You can use fruit from the freezer section at the store (which is what I do because come on, it's February in Interior Alaska and there aren't many likely fruit choices in the produce aisle) or fresh fruit, frozen or not. You can even toss in a second banana instead. As for the liquid: milk, juice, almond/rice milk, or probably even water would work. Of course, if you use juice, the finished smoothie will be sweeter. I've been mostly making them with milk and find that the added lime juice helps the smoothie seem sweeter, which is probably just my wacky tastebuds. I make my own Greek yogurt pretty frequently and plan to do a batch in the next couple of days so I'll try using that for 1/2 C of the liquid and will let ya know how it goes.

Lime Green Smoothie

1 banana, peeled (obviously)

1 big handful of fresh baby spinach

about 1 C chopped fruit (about 5 ounces by weight)

3/4 C milk

2 T lime juice

Place all ingredients in a blender, cover, and blend until completely combined.

Yield: about 2 1/2 C, which makes 1 big smoothie or 2 little ones.