After we bought a Vitamix blender, we started making daily smoothies. The recipe book included contains a recipe for a tropical fruit smoothie and that’s the one I like. It uses oranges, bananas, pineapples, and spinach.
An issue I struggled with was the fruit and spinach going bad if I didn’t use it in time or especially when I had leftover spinach which was every time. I like spinach, but we don’t eat many salads around here and I was always throwing away yucky spinach. I don’t like wasting food or money.
So I decided to freeze it and that solved my problem. Except that it introduced a new one: I use zip top freezer bags and they’d get so much fruit juice on the outside from me wrangling the bags open with juicy fingers to get the fruit inside. The bags won’t stand up by themselves when they’re empty.
So we were at Sur la Table the other week and I saw these on the clearance table. They had enough (I need 3 or 4 for a batch of fruit) and they were cheap so I bought them. They work great!
The arms are adjustable and they hold the bags open.
Here’s a link to them on Amazon:
Here’s the recipe as I make it:
One batch yields about two 16-oz glasses (give or take depending on the size of the fruit), so I drink one and save the rest in a container for the next day. Since the pineapple yields about 4 generous slices, this gives me 4 batches and I use two per week. And if you are using fruit that you’ve frozen, it needs to be at least partially thawed or the blender will have a tough time.
4 navel oranges
1 fresh pineapple
4 ripe bananas
1 bag baby spinach
Agave syrup, light or dark (use your sweetener of choice)
1 cup water if the fruit has been frozen or 1 cup ice cubes if fresh
Peel the oranges and bananas. You can cut them up but I generally leave the orange whole and break the banana in half to fit inside the bag. Cut the top and bottom off the pineapple, cut into 4 generous (about 1 inch) slices and cut off the outside rind or whatever it’s called (or cut off the rind first and then into slices) and then cut each slice into quarters so that they’re easier to handle. Throw one orange, one banana, four pineapple quarters and a hearty handful of spinach into a bag to freeze for later or into the blender to drink now. If straight-to-blender, add one cup ice cubes. If you’re blending thawed fruit, add one cup cold water. Once the fruit is in the blender, add the sweetener. I use 4 swirls of the agave syrup. Blend on high for a good 45 seconds. One nice thing about the Vitamix is the pusher can be used to push the fruit down toward the blades while it’s blending, especially helpful when the fruit is frozen. (That whole orange can be pesky.)
I hope you’ll try this recipe whether you buy the Baggy Racks or not. A couple of my coworkers were making a smoothie that they called the green monster. I think it had kale in it rather than spinach. It looked awful to me but if you can get past the color, this one tastes great!
allthingsrobin 