Talk Back with Ellen Wood

Discover the potency of delicious, nourishing green smoothies

Summer is almost gone but we can still get luscious, ripe, organic fruits and vegetables at a local farm, farmer’s market or health food store. In fact, most supermarkets now have an organic produce section as well. Here’s a mouth-watering, easy way to get a ton of nutrition from these fruits and veggies – and help you grow younger: make green smoothies.

I make them in my Vitamix but you can use any blender as long as it’s powerful – 1000 watts or more. Unlike a juicer, clean-up is easy with a blender, and you’re not throwing out the fiber that’s so good for you.

I put the greens – such as spinach, kale, chard, dandelion greens, arugula, bok choy, celery or mustard greens – plus about two or three cups of water and some fruit – into the blender and turn it on for 30 seconds or less. For optimal health, it’s best to drink a quart a day, but sometimes I drink one pint and put the other pint in the refrigerator for the next day. Then just fill the blender halfway with water, put a few drops of dish soap in, put the lid on and turn it on. In about 15 seconds your blender is clean. Just rinse it out.

Use only the greens, such as beet tops or carrot tops, not the whole vegetable, since all kinds of fruit mix well with greens, but not with vegetables. Bananas and apples are good in green smoothies and easy to have on hand since apples will keep in the fridge quite a while and bananas will keep in the freezer.

When I bring bananas home from the supermarket (they do not have to be organic), I separate each one from the bunch because they keep longer that way. I freeze those I don’t eat fresh. Once they’re close to going downhill into overripe, I peel each one, break it in half and put it into a snack baggie. Then I put all the little baggies into one big baggie and freeze them. As I use each banana in a smoothie, I put the used snack baggie into the big bag in the freezer for re-use next time I freeze bananas.

Don’t peel the apples (organic only) but do discard the seeds before putting them in the blender because apple seeds contain a chemical that releases cyanide into the body when ingested. (Not very harmful unless you eat a lot of them.) I also use mangos, pears, berries, peaches and any other kind of fruit in with the greens. 

I recommend reading Green Smoothie Revolution: The Radical Leap Towards Natural Health by Victoria Boutenko, if you want inspiration and recipes for delicious, nutritious smoothies.

Here are a few points to remember, based on the information in her book:

 

1. Use only greens, fruit and water. Don’t add anything else like protein powder or nuts and supplements.
2. Your smoothie should not be part of a meal. Drink it by itself and don’t eat or drink anything else for forty minutes before or after your smoothie.
3. Never add starchy vegetables like carrots, zucchini, cabbage, peas, corn, green beans, etc. to your green smoothie since those don’t combine well with fruit (except apples.)
4. Rotate your greens. For example, use spinach one day, kale the next, chard the following day, and so on. You don’t need to rotate your fruits.
5. Make it delicious so you’ll look forward to drinking it.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, laugh a lot and drink plenty of green smoothies.

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