Perhaps my most oft-advised piece of food frugality wisdom is using what you have already in the fridge to cook what you “want” to eat.  This can also be re-hashed as buying what’s on sale and cooking with that instead of choosing the recipe first then purchasing the ingredients later.  Additionally, another element of frugality is using what you have around before it spoils.  At any rate, I remind you of this because recently my local store flier had both yogurt quarts and spinach bags (large) on sale.  They are both good individually of course, but like anything that has to be bought in larger quantities – it’s tough to down it before it spoils.  Even with my recent vigilance about eating in – I was beginning to get frantic about the impending spoilage time line.

On an entirely different note, I really like those Naked Green Machine Drinks… but they are not budget friendly.  I’ve justified with Costco coupons, sales and the occasional treat, but for the most part I exercise resistance.  Anyway – my love of those peaked my interest in something I had browsed over on a friends blog not that long ago.

THE GREEN MONSTER… dun dun dun!

Anyway, the Green Monster is not only a drink it’s a movement.  A drink that is made up of Spinach and basically whatever else you want (best I can tell from the example recipes).  In this case yogurt was include.  So onto my very own recipe experimentation (this is a food blog after all).

Ruby Leigh’s Green Monster Trial #1
-1 Cup Spinach, not tightly packed
-Just a bit of Chopped Carrot
-Just a bit of Diced Cucumber
-Whole Apple Diced (and cored)
-1/4 cup Yogurt
-2 Tbs water
-1 tsp Flaxseed oil

Ingredients are listed in the order that I dumped them into the Magic Bullet Mug.  Once in, you blend, shake a little, and blend some more.  If you use a rather large apple and a rather small blender (as I did), everything may not fit in at the start. This was the case in my experiment.  Eventually, everything worked out though.
And, here’s the final concoction (half-eaten ;)).  The verdict: It was very tasty, although not really comparable to Naked’s Green Machine as I had thought.  However, it was a little mealy and thicker then I like my “drinks” I’m not sure if simply adding water would help or if I should also remove the apple skins.