As the mom of 2 teenage boys, I struggle to get them to eat anything healthy. Fruits, maybe, but veggies? I hear this complaint from all the parents I see in my clinic, so I know I'm not alone here. When the boys were little, I used to make fruit smoothies for them, calling them "fruit shakes", and in an effort to improve our nutrition, I've recently started making them again. It's been fun getting creative with ingredients and there are so many resources on the internet!
Recently
GreenBlender approached me to see if I wanted to test their subscription service, offering to send me a box. Coincidence? I didn't hesitate to say yes!
GreenBlender is a smoothie delivery service company based in NYC. They send all the ingredients, pre-portioned, so that you can make healthy smoothies at home.
GB uses locally sourced, organic produce and the ingredients are 100% vegan. Each week you get all the ingredients to make 5 different smoothies (enough to make 10 portions). The website has a ton of recipes and ideas to make your smoothies just perfect!
My
GreenBlender box came via FedEx. I was excited to open it and see what was inside! I received the "St Patrick's Day Smoothie" box, and I was pleased to see that everything was cold when I opened the box.
The first smoothie I made was the Mint Chocolate Shamrock. I would never have thought to put fresh mint into a smoothie, but there it was. They also used green leaf lettuce from Gotham Greens, which is a company that grows all its produce in pestide-free, ecologically sustainable, 100% clean energy greenhouses. I've been buying this lettuce locally at Whole Foods and just love it. I was excited to see GG included in this box! It was easy to put all the ingredients in the blender because they were all premeasured. The only thing I did differently was to add kefir in place of the water that the recipe called for. We aren't vegan and my athletic son needs protein. The kefir made the smoothie more creamy and both Matthew and I gave this one a thumbs up.
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Pre-blend |
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The Mint Chocolate Shamrock |
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Pre-gymnastics meet |
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He came in 1st out of 15 boys--could it be the smoothie? We thought so! |
The Luck of the Eye-rish smoothie was orange, using orange, carrots, and goji berries, and with the addition of the kefir, tasted like a dreamsicle. I think this was Matthew's favorite smoothie.
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Luck of the Eye-Rish pre blend |
He also enjoyed the Lepre-clean, which contained cucumber, apple, honeydew, and ginger as well as the Emerald Green smoothie, which contained kale, pear, kiwi, and pineapple.
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Lepre-clean pre blend |
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Lepre-Clean |
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Emerald Green pre blend |
I didn't want to leave my oldest son out, and since he's allergic to dairy, I made the Irish Coffee smoothie as the recipe called for. This smoothie contained collard greens, pear, grapes, oats, green coffee, and coconut milk. We both thought it was pretty tasty, but I would have preferred it with the kefir. Tom would have liked more coffee flavor--we've never tasted green coffee, but you wouldn't have known there was coffee in this one.
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Irish Coffee pre blend |
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Irish Coffee |
I really liked the
GreenBlender smoothies, as did my sons, and found it a great way to try smoothies with ingredients that I would never have tried before. Luckily all of us are pretty adventurous when it comes to food, and so we didn't feel the need to leave out any ingredients, except the nuts which both boys are allergic to. There were some interesting ingredients that I had never heard of like
camu camu and
chlorella, which was as green as you might think! I thought these smoothies were a great way to get veggies into our diets. Adding kefir or yogurt is my recommendation if you are not vegan. I liked that everything was already measured out so I could quickly whip these up in the morning before school and work. But I should also note that there is a little prep work before you blend everything together. Obviously the fruits and veggies wouldn't be their freshest if they came pre-peeled and chopped, so you do need to do that yourself.
After making all these yummy smoothies, I realized that I need a better blender if I want to continue to make creative smoothies! My old Osterizer really moaned and groaned while trying to blend everything. Tom's smoothie, the Irish Coffee which contained the oats, was a little "chewy" and not as smooth as we would have liked, and this is when I told my husband that I want a Ninja blender for Mother's Day.
Do you want to try your own
GreenBlender Smoothies? Click on any of the
GreenBlender links or use the code
LONGWAYHOME to get 20% off your first order!
Do you make smoothies? And do you put veggies in your smoothies? Any fun recipes you want to share? What blender would you recommend I buy?
I was given a box of GreenBlender smoothie ingredients in exchange for my review. All opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.
I'm linking this post with
DebRuns for Wednesday Word. Today's word is adventurous!
I'm also linking up with
Confessions of a Mother Runner and
Miss Whisk for Meatless Mondays!