Spinach: The Green Monster Smoothie

I was standing at my blender, literally thinking: This is the grossest thing I have ever made. I can’t believe people are getting away with hawking this on Pinterest like it’s some kind of dietary miracle.

I’m a skeptical person by nature, and when I see/read/hear something (pinterest-ed or not), that seems too good to be true, well I typically choose to believe that it’s just not true and move on. But for some reason food-related truths and half-truths are really bugging me right now. I feel like I’m on a crusade to debunk every pin that claims that this DELICIOUS food is also NO CALORIES and if you click on my blog and then make the hidden recipe, you will then magically be TRANSFORMED INTO A SUPERMODEL. And that is how I ended up blending a banana and four cups of spinach.

[Note: This is not my photo. I'll take one later and post it so you know I'm telling the truth.  You can find this image/blog by google searching "green monster smoothie"]

Dubious Pin: The Green Monster Smoothie (if you have a pinterest account, you’ve seen this floating around). 

Dubious Recipe Instructions: Add Spinach to your favorite smoothie and you can’t taste it even though it looks like Vom.

Back to me standing in front of my blender, salivating with delight at the thought of writing a full blown rant on how wrong everyone is. Pan out: I stop the blender, drop a straw into the blender cup (I’m not getting a glass dirty for this), and tentatively take a sip.

You can see where this is going. It actually doesn’t suck. The spinach smoothie actually doesn’t taste..bad…it’s kind of good?...it’s…good. Damn. Hot damn this is actually good. My quest was totally derailed, and I have happened upon a way to eat four cups of spinach almost painlessly. Transition shot to me happily jumping on the bandwagon.

Here’s the way I made spinach not taste like spinach. I haven’t tried all the other ways, but I probably will because let’s face it, I’m not really good at eating my greens and this seems sort of miraculous.

Spinach Smoothie

Here’s what you need:

1 banana, peeled, cut, and frozen

1 generous tablespoon of creamy peanut butter

½ Cup of 0% Greek Yogurt

1 Cup of Vanilla Soy Milk

4 Freaking Cups of Spinach (or less, if that much doesn’t fit in the blender after everything else is in).

Here’s what you do:

You can see where this is going, right. I put all the ingredients, in the order listed, in the blender and: Blend. After that you can email me and we can exclaim some more about how crazy this is. Crazy because it’s super high in Vitamin A, Iron, and Protein: All things that I’m pretty sure you need for survival. The moral of the story: if you have a blender, your survival is assured; or: maybe don’t hate on every recipe that’s “good for you.”

Here are the deets:

Roasted Acorn Squash with Orange Cranberry Glaze

DELICIOUS! Delicious Veggies! Okay, I'm really trying to eat more veggies and fruits, and to get what's easily available at the market. The very best veggie recipes I've found are either from friends or from this amazing cookbook by Mollie Katzen -- you remember the saladita? Yeah, that was from her book too. Most recent veggie adventure: Roasted Acorn Squash with Orange Cranberry Glaze.

The final deliciousness: 

In the beginning, there was an acorn squash

The original recipe calls for two acorn squash, so I went with it, even though Lito and I really don't eat that much squash -- I try to stick to the recipe the first time around and wait until either the second time or the last minute to make changes. Making two squash is fine. I personally liked a little higher ratio of glaze to squash, but knock yourself out with as much squash as you like here.

Nutella and Banana Ice Cream

Okay, so I saw this recipe on Pinterest and I was reeeallly skeptical -- there seem to be a lot of really too-good-to-be-true pins. Like the one about how Quinoa has more protein than meat. Or the Alan Rickman "All this time" quote, which apparently he never said. The pin said nutella + bananas = life changed.

So...overstatement? Yes. Life changed? Not entirely. But is this pretty dang good and easy to make? Absolutely. Okay, write this down: 5-6 medium bananas and 1/3 Cup of Nutella. Blend. Freeze. That's it.

This dessert meets nearly all of my criteria for awesomeness:
1. Easy
2. Easy
3. Chocolatey.

(We'll get to my other criteria later...)

Okay, so seriously try this and let me know if you love it and/or if your life is completely changed.

k.

Eating In Season:

Just saw this on Pinterest and I thought it was a great idea. I'm new to eating fresh fruits and veggies, and this guide, I think, is really helpful for getting started. What else is in season right now? Anyone have any good mid-winter cooking ideas?

<3  k.

Spinach Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

Okay, if I can get dudes to eat salad during the SuperBowl, then you know that either 1- bacon is involved; or 2- this is a really freakin' good salad.

I kind of think it's both. This recipe was originally from my Aunt G, who is a pretty amazing chef, and it is my pleasure to share my simplified version of it here!