Everyday Cheapskate: A green smoothie recipe that will revolutionize your mornings

Some days I can’t believe how lucky I am. Not only do I get to connect with this growing audience of readers, but many of you visit my blog EverydayCheapskate.com, sign up to see me in your inbox every morning, and even return the favor with nice answers. Every day I open my mailbox and spill out wonderful notes, letters – and even the occasional multi-page tome. Most of the time you send me questions, but every once in a while it’s just a wonderful thank you message. Always, I am grateful for your comments.

Dear Cheapskate: I’m marching in your green smoothie breakfast army! Is your recipe (see previous column, “It Turns Out It’s Easy to Be Green”) for one or two people? (Asked as she obligingly drinks the whole thing, which seems quite enough!) — Christine

Dear Christine: You just made me laugh out loud imagining you marching in your green uniform, a smoothie in hand. This is a recipe for a 16 ounce smoothie, and yes, it makes a very adequate and healthy breakfast. You can easily split this to make two smaller portions, but I like your style. By the way, I’m happy to have you in the army. (For curious readers who may have missed this column, below is a replay of the column Nancy is referring to.)

It turns out it’s easy to be green

Do I have a story for you. I don’t like to think that my husband and I give in easily to peer pressure, but apparently we do.

We have friends who follow a healthy lifestyle: healthy eating and extreme exercise. I call anything extreme that contains the words “running,” “jogging,” or “cycling.” They are so passionate about these things that they don’t even think about taking a short break during our visit. Oh no. We’re talking green smoothies everywhere, every morning. No questions, no excuses.

Let me just say here that my husband has never met a vegetable he enjoys. He’s just not interested in them. It never was. But he’s more kind than temperamental, and so in the interest of friendship, he (OK, and I) put on a happy face and went down to the putting green whenever we visited our friends Carol and Steve. And Harold was shivering in a way that only I was aware of — the way children do when they have to eat something they find really disgusting. It always made me laugh, but I really tried not to show it.

I can’t explain it completely, but after several of these occasions, something happened in both of us that suggested that maybe, just maybe, we could think about doing it ourselves. At home.

One thing led to another – by which I mean we started with bananas, apples and a tiny leaf of baby spinach – until, without really knowing what hit us, every morning we We made smoothies that were the color of wet water. concrete.

We decided to gradually increase the amount of spinach until it was just below the amount needed to actually taste it. And we added some cucumber to see if we could get a little more greenish color.

Long story short, it’s been over a year. Once again, I bow to the power of habit. The mostly green smoothies every morning have become a real habit. This is our new way of life.

It’s also very simple, since I found a way to do all the work in advance, assembly line style, once every two weeks.

I start by opening these bread bags (I bought a box of 1,000 on Amazon to demonstrate my level of commitment) and shaping them into “bowls” on the counter. In each bag is a chopped banana, a handful of spinach leaves, four baby carrots, four large slices of cucumber and half a chopped apple. That’s it.

I twist the bags, tie them loosely, and put them in the freezer. Do.

Every morning we take out a bag, bang it on the counter a few times, pour the contents into a blender, with about 3/4 cup of water (juice, kefir or whatever is on hand) and press the “smoothie” button. In less than 3 minutes, there you have it! A delicious, healthy green smoothie, actually quite delicious.

Don’t tell anyone, but with each batch I increase the amount of spinach. I’m trying to make our green a color that’s really pretty – like green smoothies are supposed to be.