Ridiculously Simple Green Smoothie Formula

Some mornings it’s fun to experiment with your green smoothie, adding a little of this and a dash of that until you come up with a new 12-ingredient smoothie masterpiece.

On other mornings, though, you just want to make something that’s simple, tastes great, and takes zero thought. (So you can get your butt out the door on time!)

This is that something.

Streamline your morning routine

In service of eating 2 pounds of vegetables a day, I try to drink green smoothies for breakfast nearly every morning. More often than not, I’m in experiment mode, trying berry smoothies, peach smoothies, chard smoothies, dandelion green smoothies, you name it.

I have to say, all the experimenting has been a blast! But it’s also added precious minutes to my morning routine and made me late more times than I care to admit. (I have a tendency to get carried away in the kitchen.)

So while I love making creative green smoothies, I realized that for weekday mornings, I need a formula. Unfortunately, when I went looking online, many of the green smoothie formulas I found included eye-crossingly long lists of suggested ingredients to choose from. What’s more, if you picked two of those suggestions and combined them (for instance, kale and raspberries), there’d be a decent chance you’d end up with a smoothie that didn’t taste very good. Which sort of defeats the purpose, if you ask me. I mean, isn’t the point to have the formula do the work for you?

So after much trial and error, I devised a ridiculously simple smoothie formula with as few ingredients as possible, any combination of which will taste great. In fact, it’s so easy that you can memorize it on your first or second try, and never have to think about your morning smoothie again. (Unless you want to!)

Almost as cool as making breakfast in 2 minutes flat: If you have a Ridiculously Simple Green Smoothie for breakfast, you’ll get more fruits and vegetables than the average American eats all day. Go you!

Want to supercharge your smoothie?

Just add one (or more) of the following:

• Omega-3 blast: 1 tablespoon of flax or chia seeds
• Protein power:¼ cup of cooked white beans
• Sweet spin: A few drops of liquid stevia or a squeeze of agave nectar
• Extra veggies:1 carrot or ½ peeled cucumber

That said, having a high-powered blender is key to making quick-and-easy green smoothies. If you don’t own one, I recommend the Vitamix, which is what I use at home.

If a supercharged blender isn’t in your budget, though, not to worry. Click here to learn how to make hassle-free green smoothies in a standard blender.