The Green Machine . . .

This weekend I went to Marengo with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece for her 6th grade basketball tournament.  Man, when they say tourney, they mean tourney.  We left home at noon, got there at 1pm, and got home at 9pm.  Quite the long day.  After the tourney was over, though, we hit up Phat Daddy's for some supper!!  I chose the Chicken Philly this time along with their Home Potatoes (coated in Parmesan cheese and tossed with sweet peppers and onions).  It was great, though next time I will be trying their Chicken Fettucini Alfredo because I hear rave review for it!

That was a late supper for me so this morning I felt like I needed a healthier start.  Typically I either have a PB&J or oatmeal.  Oatmeal takes a while (when I do it on the stove rather than the instant microwave 2 minutes kind), so I thought I'd try out a smoothie I had seen over at IGE.

The GREEN Monster!!

Ok, so here's the line up...milk, frozen sliced banana (I added frozen strawberries as well), Vanilla Chobani Greek Yogurt, peanut butter, and SPINACH!!  Crazy, right?!  I definitely had my doubts when I read this on IGE's blog last week, but she assured her readers that the spinach was definitely  undetectable (besides the bright green color it gave the smoothie).

So in your blender add your frozen fruit, peanut butter,

yogurt, and milk.

Then...fill the REST of the  blender with spinach.  IGE says its about 4 cups.  I didn't measure...I just filled the rest of the blender up.

Blend, blend, blend!!  It was slow going at first and I had to use the handle of a wooden spoon to push the spinach down into the liquid so that it could get purified as well.

This ended up filling one and a half glasses, so I'll have to scale it down a bit next time.

All in all, it was good.  IGE was right, you cannot taste the spinach at all.  You have to get your mind over the green color and try it.  In my opinion, it tasted mostly like banana and peanut butter.  I couldn't really taste the strawberries I added except for the occasional "seed" texture I got.

I don't think this will be an every day drink for me...but since I'm starting 5:30pm classes next week again, so I'm thinking this could be a good thing to take with me to tide me over till a late supper on those class nights.

Try it - don't let the green intimidate you!

Enjoy!!