If you’ve been keeping up with my Snapchat you know that I have developed a little obsession with green smoothies, but I’m constantly astounded at the prices. In Manhattan a green smoothie costs you ~$10, which let’s be honest, can feed someone a real meal at a sit down restaurant (ok fine maybe a diner). My in-laws gifted me the Nutri Ninja Blender System months ago and I decided to test it out and experiment with a few green smoothie recipes of my own.

Nail color: Essie in Mint Candy Apple (also comes in DIY gel kit now!)

So first, some basics. In my quest to make a delicious green (but not green tasting) smoothie, I came across this blog which i found quite handy. In order to make any smoothie you start with the same types of ingredients and then you can swap ones out based on what you like.

A sample smoothie recipe:

• 2 cups of your preferred greens (kale, spinach, dandelion greens, beet greens, arugula, lettuce, etc.)
• 1 cup creamy fruit (LOTS of options here: banana is the most common because it’s also sweet but you can use mango, peach, avocado, pear, apple, nut butters, Greek yogurt, etc.)
• 3/4 cup sweet frozen fruit (if you get frozen fruit you don’t also need ice! I like buying a frozen berry blend or anything with strawberries or mangoes)
• 1 1/2 cups liquid (almond milk, regular milk, coconut water, soy milk, hemp milk, the possibilities are endless…)

With that in mind, here is my version of the kale strawberry banana smoothie, which doesn’t taste too green.

Strawberry Kale Banana Green Smoothie

Ingredients:

1 ripe banana, diced into 1″ sections (if you like creamier smoothies, you can add more)

3/4 cup strawberries (frozen if you want your smoothie to be cold and not room temp; I used fresh strawberries because we had a basket of sweet ones)

2 cups kale — you can trim the stalks off the night before so you only have leafy bunches of kale to use in your smoothie

1 cup coconut water

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

Mix all together in the blender and enjoy! My Nutri Ninja Blender comes with single serve attachments so as long as I prep the ingredients the night before I can actually blend an individual smoothie for myself in the morning before heading to work. Now whether or not I can actually wake up the extra 15 minutes earlier is another question…

Do you have any favorite smoothie recipes?