Green Smoothies: Better than your mama's morning coffee

I wish I would have discovered these last week, when I had papers, presentations, internship-errands, and other end-of-the-quarter madness keeping me from getting more than 5 hours of sleep many nights in a row.

Nope, it's not green beer.

While I was stalking my favorite veggie blogs, I ran into a lot of hype about these magical green smoothies that make you skinny and beautiful and sprout faerie wings and such. It sounded like a diet fad or a sales pitch so I rolled my eyes until I read the ingredients.

I found out that there are multiple variations of green smoothies, but the basic elements are the same. Fruit, sometimes frozen or in juice form. Green vegetables, especially spinach or kale. Water if needed. That's it. So really, it's just a clever way to get us to eat our fruits and veggies in raw form. Not bad, right?

Well, try one. Seriously, go try one. Core an apple or two and toss it in your blender. Add a banana. Throw in some ice. Juice an orange and dump that in, pulp and all. Then, tear of a few chunks of kale or spinach. It's okay to be nervous at this point, to look at your leafy green and think, "you should be cooked, leafy green, not slurped." Really, just go with it. Try some ice in there too, and BLEND until drinkable.

You might find, as I did, that this tasted like fruit and not at all like vegetables. You might find, like I did that you aren't hungry for lunch until several hours later than usual. You might find, as I did, that you feel, oh, I don't know, energy(?) without ever touching your coffee or tea cup. You might find yourself, as I did, thinking of the green smoothie and it's "buzz" before you get out of bed in the morning and feeling a just a little bit better about waking up.