Keep up the wonderful blogging~

* 3 kale leaves (I strip the leaf off the stalk. You may not need to do this if you have a really powerful blender like a Vita-mix)
* 2-3 sorrel leaves (stalk and all, the stalks are tender)
* small bunch of parsley (but I do trim tougher stalks, again this is so I don’t choke my blender)
* 1-2 fronds of fennel (fresh)
* handful of mint leaves (fresh)
* 3-4 bananas (fresh or frozen)
* 2 cups kombucha (you can also use water or fruit juice, or coconut juice – really yummy)
* approx 1/2 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen) (optional)

Recently I’ve also been adding 1-2 Tablespoons of good quality honey. You can adjust the amount of greens, so if you find the ‘green’ flavor is too much, just cut back on the amounts of greens and add more fruit. You can also add apple (peel and core them first), other berries and fruits. You can gradually build back up as your taste buds adjust to the flavors. Also, what I do is blend just the greens and liquid together. I use pulse at first to get everything chopped, then I gradually turn up the speed until I’m on high and I let it go for a while until the liquid turns green and I don’t have any noticeable specks of green. Then I add the rest of the ingredients and do through the same, pulse then blend on low and turn the speed up.

I never measure but just go on intuition and while some are better than others, they are almost all really nice tasting. So I’ve been thinking… do you use ripe bananas? The only way I can imagine the green smoothies would taste really bad is if the bananas are not ripe. The riper they are the sweeter and that taste really offsets the potentially bitter taste of the greens. You may know when bananas are ripe, but I know many people don’t know how to tell. So here’s how to tell if your bananas are ripe. When bananas start getting ripe they get tiny brown spots on the skin. The more spots, the riper the banana is, to the point where the entire skin can be black and the banana inside can be very sweet, soft and ripe but not fermented or rotten. Actually this is the point at which you want to make banana bread or muffins with them.

There is a huge difference between green or yellow (but still unripe) bananas which are starchy tasting and not that sweet and ripe bananas which have brown spots appearing on the skin. The ripe bananas are softer and much sweeter. Often I find bananas in the supermarket on sale because they have started getting the brown spots on their skins. When they get like this it’s much easier to damage them if something is pressing against them, so the store tries to get rid of them at a discounted price. But I also think they do that because people (most people) won’t buy them that way, but that’s when they actually taste the nicest, they actually start developing their flavor as the starch turns to natural fruit sugars. And those are the ones that are perfect for your green smoothies (or any smoothie). If you peel it and there are dark patches on the fruit, just cut them off with a knife or scoop them out with a spoon, they are bruises and the rest of the banana should be fine.

I’m getting a new box of organic bananas middle of next week. It will take a few days to ripen, but I’ll take some photos so I can do a comparison between the ripe and unripe bananas.

I hope that helps. Let me know how you go. I’ll be posting more articles soon with more exact instructions and recipes too.

Thanks for asking!
Donna

You have a recipe for a green smoothie with Sorrel and mint and kombucha. I tried it and it was interesting. I liked it but couldn’t drink too much. (My smoothies tend to be lots of greens with a little apple or fruit)

Would love to know the amounts you used. I’m new all this and getting too creative makes me nervous cuz I spend so much money buying the ingredients.

Thanks!