"Green" Drink for beginners

I love the idea of the hugely popular green drink.  What a fabulous way to get a few servings of vegetables and fruits in, and easily!  In practice, though, it's a bit more work than pouring cereal and milk into a bowl.  We started "green drinking" a few years ago and we're pretty regular about it, though some weeks we're better than others.  And that's fine. I do find that on days when we start off with a green drink it's so much easier to make better choices as the day progresses.  Of course, it's also easy for me to say "sure, let's swing by Starbucks for a treat because I drank a big glass of spinach this morning!".  (This scene may have played out this morning.)  Our green drink is certainly not the pure, heavy-on-the-veggies drink that the nutritarian crowd espouses (hi, mom!), but this is a big step away from the Standard American Diet and that is the right direction for my young family.

Our basic recipe goes into the blender like this:

2 cups of water
2 bananas
Fill the blender base to the top with organic spinach and baby kale (this is a lot, but the taste really does disappear into the fruit)
1 small bag of organic blueberries
1 Tbsp chia seeds

Blend on high for longer than you might think.  We blend for a good 90 seconds.  Serve immediately and enjoy.  The best part is that you can easily add in a handful of baby carrots, some frozen broccoli, different fruits or all of the above and the powerful flavor of the bananas really keeps it from tasting like you're drinking a salad.  I love salad, I just don't want to drink it.
     
  *the drink pictured above is hardly green because we were out of bananas and I added more blueberries than usual.  I swear, it's always feast or famine in this house when it comes to bananas.  Naturally, I purchased three bunches when we went to the commissary earlier.  I predict a mad dash to use up a few overripe bananas early next week.  It's a viscous cycle.

xoxo, Maura