Yet another tasty, healthy, flexible, and easy recipe to add to your files (no expensive juicer required)! These smoothies are a great addition to any breakfast or lunch, and leftovers stored in the fridge are surprisingly good the next day. 
The best thing about this recipe (probably thanks to the fact that a smoothie looks just like a milkshake) is that both of my daughters love them, and my pickier child ends up consuming fruits and vegetables that she would not normally eat. I had been making these for a while when one day I added the spinach, and it barely changed the taste. I was so excited that I could easily get everyone (including me) to eat some fresh, raw spinach!
It is currently strawberry season here in NC, and this is a great way to use up all of those freshly picked berries. But, feel free to experiment with substitutions based on your family’s favorites. I noted some alternatives that we have tried below. Please leave a comment if you try something new to let us know how it turns out!
Tasty Smoothies
- 1.5 cups plain organic yogurt
- 1 cup berries, fresh or frozen (or we have tried 2 oranges, peeled)
- 2 bananas (or 1 – 2 tablespoons of honey if you don’t like bananas)
- 2 tablespoons milk
- ½ – ¾ cup fresh spinach leaves (I also tried adding some leftover broccoli instead of the spinach. My husband said I took things a little too far, but the kids still sucked it down!)
- Optional: if using fresh berries (instead of frozen) add some ice cubes
Combine all ingredients into blender and blend. Pour into cups and garnish with fruit or use fun straws to entice your kids!
I’ve never thought about adding the spinach! I’ll try it. Thanks Lisa!
Hi Lisa! My name is Hope and I found you just searching on the web. I recently finished reading “In defense of food”. I am a going to school for dietetics because i love food and nutrition and all of that. I just made a goal for myself to cut out all processed foods! I started a blog about it also, however I am going to switch over to wordpress because I like it more than blogger. anyways, just wanted to say HI and say I am excited about what you are doing. I just started with this whole goal only about a week ago, so i’m a little new on it all, but I am super excited!
Hello there! I love coming across others who are on board with this. I was considering blogspot too, but several people recommended wordpress to me and it has worked well so far. Also, I felt very overwhelmed in the first few weeks of changing our diet so hopefully some of the stuff I have written about will help you out. I agree that the book was great, but once you decide to move forward it doesn’t exactly tell you what specific foods to buy and what recipes to make (which is what I am trying to do here). I would love to trade notes once you get you your new blog going!
[...] green mold at the bottom was filled with grape juice. The pink one was filled with some leftover smoothie. One thing we have learned about these molds is that it is best to find ones that have little holes [...]
[...] Fruit smoothie or PB&J Smoothie (pictured) and whole-wheat biscuit [...]
My girls and I loved it! Thank you!
Can you use frozen spinach instead of fresh?
I’ve never tried it…start with a little bit at first to make sure it works okay!
[...] morning for breakfast we tried the Fruit Smoothie recipe. Notice it calls for spinach. A friend of mine has done this and her kids like it. You [...]
My family and I have “green smoothies” (all fruit/greens with water) every morning – I hate salads, so this is how I get my greens down!
Two tips: blend your spinach and liquid FIRST, then add the other fruit. That way the spinach is microscopic and you don’t get any icky chunks. Second, you can buy spinach at Costco, or any other fresh bulk way, and then wash it and freeze it in gallon bags! Easy to break off a chunk for smoothies and cheaper than store-frozen!
Fantastic tip!! And it is so much faster to wash it once and freeze it than to wash a handful every time you want it. Thanks!
My family has smoothies every morning that are similar to these. However we substitute frozen mango and water in place of yogurt and milk as we are trying to eat primarily vegan. If you’ve never read ‘The China Study’ by T. Colin Campbell, I would highly recommend it.
I find that protein is very important in smoothies. Possibilities: protein powder; nut butters, soaked raw cashews…
Flax seed, too!!!
I am just starting a clean eating blog and getting recipes from my clean eating magazine. I notice when the recipes call for yogurt it is always greek yogurt. Do you ever use greek yogurt?
I couldn’t find Greek yogurt that was both organic and whole milk so I just use regular b/c I want it to be both of those things. Greek yogurt is a little higher in protein, but other than that I think they are equally good.
I have at times made my own yogurt – and to make Greek yogurt, you just take regular yogurt and drain it. Put it in a clean dishtowel, wrap a rubber band around the top to hold all the sides of the towel together, and hang someplace with a bowl underneath for a bit. Leave it for an hour or so and you’ll get Greek yogurt, leave it longer and you’ll get an approximation of cream cheese – which I have used plain on bagels, etc. or flavored with herbs and such to make different spreadable cheeses. HTH.
I started making sneaky healthy smoothies for our son a few months ago when he went through his last round of teeth (8 teeth in 6 weeks!)and was super hungry but didn’t want to chew anything. We make them often now as a snack before a big outing or if dinner gets rejected.
I make his smoothies with silken tofu instead of banana and yogurt. I add half an avocado plus 2 tbl. of ground flax. I also add some steamed and cooled butternut squash and carrots plus spinach. Then we do either peaches or mango with raspberries and strawberries. To thin it out I add some unsweetened soy milk and a splash of orange juice.
My son chugs it down like its a big treat but it’s really a meal in a glass! I like it for myself as a treat after a good zumba class
I’m giving the Week 1 Pledge a whirl and am looking to add this to my breakfast meal (which I currently don’t eat). I’m wondering how many ounces this smoothie recipe makes. I would only be making it for me and I don’t want a ton of leftovers cause I’m not sure if it would keep for me.
Thanks!
If you are making the recipe just for you I would cut the recipe in half…good luck!
I don’t know if someone else already suggested this but we add kale (and spinach- 1 cup of each) to our smoothies and you would never know (except for the fact that the smoothie is green in color)! My kids LOVE them which is awesome since those two greens are so great.
Made these for breakfast for my kiddos…funny story my picky eater son who is 7 years old. I told him that if he had the entire smoothy he is going to do AWESOME at his basketball game. We went to his game nd he had one of his best games.
Now he is requesting that I make it before his next game. LOVE IT!!!!!
YOU ROCK…what I love about your recipes are the fact that hey are really kid friendly. We had your whole wheat waffles this morning and they were ALL gone ( none to freeze ).
I make smoothies for myself a few times a week, and I always add oatmeal to make them more filling (just 1/2 cup of quick-cook oats straight from the pantry). For my first experiment in hiding healthy stuff, I tried spinach and couldn’t even tell it was in there — I buy frozen bagged spinach (Trader Joe’s has a cheap organic version) because it’s easier to shake out what I want instead of hacking at a frozen block of spinach. For my next experiment I tried frozen peas, but never managed to blend them finely enough. They’re pesky. Now I’m using frozen broccoli and it’s great! It blends nicely and I can’t even tell it’s in there.
I just made this recipe and it was huge hit! We joined a local co-op and used all local ingredients and it was soooo good! Thank you! I did add 1/2 t. of vanilla, but that’s just a force of habit when it comes to smoothies. We also got the freeze pop containers, which I think is great – this way we don’t end up with separated smoothie in the fridge that we forgot about.. not that I think we would forget about this smoothie very easily.
Mine were a little tart. I didn’t use bananas but used the honey. Maybe the strawberries were tart. Any ideas??
I think ripe bananas sweeten it up quite a bit…might need more honey if you aren’t going to use them.
our favorite smoothie is a kale colada…handful of kale (I keep some frozen)~ a banana~ some pineapple juice (or fresh pineapple)~ and a small can of coconut milk (the real stuff found in the Asian section, not the coconut replacement milk)~~ YUMM!!
I love to add a little raw beet to all our smoothies cause it gives the illusion of a sweeter berry taste with more nutrition. When ever I make anybody a smoothie (kid or adult) with a little beet added (spinach, kale, beet greens, banana, flax seed, cucumber, bell pepper, almonds etc, etc) they always think they are tasting some sort of berry, even if there is none in there. Awesome! I love my Vitamix!
Another thing you could use instead of honey is an all natural sweetener such as Agave! Also, another alternative to spinach is Kale! My kids have been drinking these smoothies for months now and have no idea how good and healthy they are for them!!!!
Is there an alternative to yogurt? For some reason I can’t ever get yogurt to last longer than a day or two in my fridge so we don’t buy it very often.
Thanks.
You could try it with extra milk instead of yogurt.