Spring Clean Smoothie

 

I figured out a way to make tasty green smoothies with asparagus!

I just finished a spring asparagus pesto recipe and wanted to use the left over ingredients to make a spring smoothie.   Less wasted food = endless creations of tasty recipes. I never thought of making a detox green smoothie with asparagus…until now.

I bit into a crunchy piece of raw asparagus while I was thinking of what to blend with it. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen many asparagus green smoothie recipes.

When I did an internet search, there was even a post about asparagus smoothies as being a fail. The writer could not find any good combinations to hide the bitter flavor of the raw asparagus. So I wonder if the few other asparagus smoothie posts that I found even tasted good.

Don’t you just get disappointed when you try out a “healthy” recipe and it just didn’t taste all that great? If I’m going to eat real food, it is going to be real tasty!

So I remembered, when I freeze asparagus and then thaw it out for soup the next week, I barely have to steam them because they are already soft and not so bitter.

So in the blender the thawed asparagus went! As I mentioned in the Spring Superfood Asparagus Pesto Recipe, asparagus has inulin that acts as a prebiotic, which is very cleansing for your digestive track.

I usually add fruit to my green smoothies and have them for breakfast. Juicing is best first thing in the morning. And when I say juicing, this is WHOLE FOOD juicing with all the nutrients and fiber still intact. If you use a regular juicer, you will have to use twice the amount of produce and have food waste from the leftover pulp.

I bought a Magic Bullet from my local store thinking that it would be a good smoothie maker. It took forever to blend and it only came out as thick pulp. Magic Bullet brand came out with a more recent and better mini blender called the NutriBullet which has a better motor that literally makes it a superfood nutrient extractor. It makes smooth as silk shakes on the go!

So don’t get confused like I did. Even if you bought the older Magic Bullet version, the motor will quickly burn out as you try to blend fibrous foods. You can still get the Nutribullet here at a discount plus free shipping.

They don’t have to be all green, here is  a detox smoothie with ALL CLEANSING pink grapefruit + pineapple + green apple + ginger + mint. You can also save money by buying a whole pineapple and cutting it up into cubes and freezing them. Pineapple is  a great addition to any smoothie! Fast. Easy. Real Food. Deliciousness.

Recipe

5 stalks of asparagus thawed and chopped

8 quarter sized cubed pineapple

1 banana or 6-8 strawberries (or both)

1 cup or more of torn fresh spinach

Try adding in a bit of spring peas or pea shoots if you can find some!

One of my favorite farmers markets have pea shoots. I have been getting sprouts and shoots from there since the winter! If you think you can’t get fresh greens in the winter try seeking out your local farmers that grow produce in green houses that can survive the winter cold.

Make sure you wash all produce to get rid of contamination. Foodborne breakouts are not just a meat problem as we are aware of the recent Listeria scare with a recall of Sabra Hummus on expiration dates May 11 and May 15. The USDA is even publishing studies to find alternative methods to  wash produce before it reaches your home. You can use these same simple techniques  at home to fight foodborne illness.

Happy clean eats!