After several months of drinking my favorite green monster (the virgin), I decided to experiment. I brought my obsession with dried figs into the picture, and voila! I discovered my go-to recipe.  The cucumber makes this smoothie especially smooth and creamy, and the figs add a fantastic sweetness!

Hope you enjoy!
Becky’s Fig Dream

Ingredients:
2-3 cups of spinach
1 small cucumber (or 1/2 medium or large)
2 dried figs, chopped and stems removed
1 1/4 cups of unsweetened almond milk
1 tbsp chia or flaxseeds
4-6 ice cubes

Directions:
Blend all ingredients together except ice.  After the mixture begins to look smooth, add your ice in.  This makes a lot, so grab someone you love to share!

I must admit I was pretty weary of ‘the green monster’ at first! I thought: “a spinach smoothie?!?!? I love spinach, but can that really taste good?!?!” Well, I gave in and tried it… and LOVED it!!! My favorite recipe so far is–>

*1 banana, peeled, chopped, and FROZEN
*1/2 cup light vanilla soy milk
*1/4 cup oats
*2 BIG handfuls spinach
*Swirl of honey/agave
*granola

First puree the frozen banana and soy milk until smooth and creamy (*NOTE: you can stop here and enjoy an AWESOME dessert). Then add the spinach, oats and honey and puree again until blended! Top with granola and enjoy! I like to eat mine with a spoon out of a bowl!

I’ve been madly in love with green smoothies (oops! I mean monsters!) for several years now. One of my all-time favorite green additions has always been fresh, baby spinach leaves. But I also adore chard. And since it’s growing by leaps and bounds in my organic garden, it’s currently my go-to green for smoothies!

I love that Rainbow Chard is so vibrant and beautiful. It’s fun to eat by itself, add to salads or other recipes, too – and the nutrition stats are simply amazing:

“If vegetables got grades for traditional nutrients alone, Swiss chard would be one of the vegetable valedictorians. The vitamin and mineral profile of this leafy green vegetable contains enough “excellents” to ensure its place at the head of the vegetable Dean’s List. Our rating system awards Swiss chard with excellent marks for its concentrations of vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, magnesium, manganese, potassium, iron, vitamin E, and dietary fiber. Swiss chard also emerges as a very good or good source of copper, calcium, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, protein, phosphorus, vitamin B1, zinc, folate, biotin, niacin and pantothenic acid.” – WH Foods

Need I say more? Okay, I will anyway. This recipe is SO delicious and energizing – I’m addicted and have been drinking it day-after-day!

Rainbow Grass Juice-Smoothie Concoction Recipe

Ingredients:

1 (frozen) banana
1 scoop Amazing Grass Wheat Grass powder
1 cup herbal tea
5 1/2 Rainbow Chard leaves (5 the size of my hand, 1 half that size) Freshly picked from my garden right before going in to this recipe!
4 ice cubes
Directions:

Toss above ingredients in to your blender and give it a few whirls until everything is blended nicely. Serves one big appetite or two smaller ones.

Note:

This drink is actually more like a juice consistency, but still has a (runny) smoothie volume to it. If you like your smoothies super thick, cut back on the herbal tea (or liquid of your choice). I personally prefer my smoothies on the thicker side, but this was so super delicious and energizing, I’ll definitely recreate it again – and soon!

Michele

Ever since I found you site, Oh She Glows, a few months ago I have been drinking a Green Monster every day.  Well, I’ve been trying to drink a Green Monster, but half of it keeps disappearing! 

As soon as my 19 month old daughter, Macy, hears  the blender she starts yelling, “Drink!  Drink!” until she has inevitably consumed at least half of my smoothie.  Looks like I’m going to have to start making a double.

Here is her favorite mix:

1 cup Rice Dream Rice Drink
3 cups (wilted) spinach
1/3 cup frozen raspberries
drizzle of honey
1 banana

Thanks, Angela, for such an amazing & healthy idea that I feel great about letting my baby steal a drink (or two) of!

I only discovered GMs this year, and I am in love!  My favorite so far is made with pumpkin (1/3 can), 1 banana, vanilla yogurt (I use one of those single serving sizes), lots of cinnamon (I LOVE cinnamon), a punch of nutmeg, flax (1 tbsp), a little milk, some ice, some sweetener (I use Sweet N Low since that is what we have at home), and of course two big handful of spinach.

It is a very smooth and delicious smoothie.  I think you will enjoy it, especially if you love pumpkin like I do.

Here’s the photo of me with a green monster on the geology field trip I went on.  Pardon the jar but it was the safest and surest way to travel with my green monster.  I was drinking a Mango-Kiwi-Banana-Spinach version here.

I was freaking all the kids on the van with this stuff..haha.  I had a few converts though!

“Fruit-full” Green Monster

2 cups of organic spinach
1 cup of almond milk (sweetened)
1 tablespoon of organic flax seeds (for texture)
1/2 medium organic banana
1 organic kiwi fruit
1 organic small mango, diced

Yummy!!

Thanks again for the site and for sharing this!  I now have at least 3 green monsters a week!

Dear Angela,

    After a full week of reading your (and your reader’s) Green Monster recipes and beating around the bush, I went out and bought a blender.  And you were absolutely right – my green monster ended up tasting divine!

Since this was my first try at the GM (and with a blender), I decided to go with your blueberry-banana version since it included more fruit than veggies (a happy thought for a newbie):

2-3 cups organic spinach
1-1.25 cups milk (cows, soy, hemp, almond, rice, etc.)
1 tablespoon flax (optional – but I added it)
1 banana
1/2 cup blueberries
ice (7 cubes gave a good consistency)

The photo makes it look a little murky since it’s backlit, but it was actually a really fantastic and not-at-all unappetizing green color!  Thank you for your website – I can’t wait to try out the other recipes!

Kate

I just completed my first ever detox(phew!) and after 14 days of cleansing, and off the detox, i am still hooked on GM’s! This particular GM turned out more like a swampy brown colour (‘normal’ folk scoff at our drinks…but they do not know what they are missing!). I had to submit this with a pic of course, because this was my BEST tasting GM yet! funnily enough, i did not have greens on hand (!!) so the greenish/brown comes from hemp protein powder as well as a substance called E3Live( basically, it is algae..so good for you)

Tasty Swampy yummy Green Monster :
(most measurements are approximate b/c i didn’t really measure :s !)

3/4 cup frozen strawberries ( i had ZERO ice, so this was my ice)
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 – 3/4 cup water
1/2 cup papaya
1/4 cup dice mango
1 scoop Vega Sport vanilla flav. protein powder
1 tbsp walnut pieces
2-3 TBSP greek yogurt (this made it thick and yumo!)
1 tbsp E3Live

blend everything together, you can also add ground Flaxseed, or a tsp flax oil- but i forgot and i had some walnuts for a bit of MUFA.(monounsaturated fats)
I topped my GM with some bee pollen- top it with anything you like! sliced almonds, cinnamon…whatever!