I’ve had quite a few people asking me how I make my breakfast smoothies, so I figured I’d throw together this simple HOWTO with plenty of obnoxious photos. It makes for a tasty and quick breakfast and it is a pretty good way to sneak in a few good servings of veggies. I generally buy all my produce from Trader Joe’s and Sprouts Market. And I buy a monster bag of frozen strawberries from Costco! Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of ingredients:

GREEN MONSTER Ingredients
Frozen pineapple chunks
Frozen strawberries
Banana
Chia seeds (I buy them in bulk at Sprouts)
Frozen broccoli (I buy the chopped kind)
Spinach
Kale
Whey Protein (I buy Nectar’s Strawberry Kiwi flavor)
Trader Joe’s Green Drink Powder

Anyway, here we go:

All the stuff!

Holy cow that looks like a lot of stuff.

Adding that pineapple

I try not to use a lot of pineapple since it’s mostly just sugar. If I were concentrating solely on weight loss I probably wouldn’t use any at all. Because I generally do around an hour of exercise every day I don’t mind this.

Frozen strawberries!

I buy a huge bag of these babies from Costco. I admit that I take in a big whiff of the bag when I open it… smells so good. I wish there was a working Smell Over TCP/IP Protocol available for you to scratch and sniff it.

BROCCOLI ACTION SHOT

This feels like cheating. I add somewhere around half to a full cup of broccoli. Usually the chopped variety but really anything works fine. You won’t even taste it. See? Cheating!

What in the hell is this thing?

Sean Trivia: Years ago before soccer practice at Penn State my friend would make fun of me because it would take me about 30 minutes to eat a banana. I just couldn’t eat them fast. Now I can pummel these things.

Chia seeds. Yes, the same ones you can make a pet out of!

Yes, I read Born To Run and think that consuming chia seeds gives me super human ability to run ultra marathons barefoot. Ok, actually I like them for their Omega-3 fatty acid profile, but hey, the placebo effect may help too.

SUPER Green Drink Powder

This stuff is probably my secret ingredient. I’ve tried other powders but never liked the taste. The Trader Joe’s powder actually tastes really good and overpowers almost everything.

Here I am so far. Is this getting exciting yet? 🙂

Alright, so things are looking pretty normal right? How about we go crazy?

A big handful of popeye food!

This is where it is definitely cheating. I take a huge handful (I added even more after this) and you can’t taste any of it. I yam what I yam. Toot toot.

KALE!

Kale is great. If you open any of those magazines you’re likely to see kale on the “Top ten super foods you should be eating” lists they like to put out. You can’t even taste it in this smoothie though. Neat eh?

SLAM that smoothie.

The blender fills up pretty quick, so I gotta slam it down to fit it all in there. I just wanted to include a photo of me punching a smoothie.

Water is important for you too.

I never add enough water and get angry that it isn’t blending correctly. I then add more and it works a little better, and then a little bit more and it works perfectly. I think I add about 1.5 cups of water to it. It makes it better for sucking up in a straw too so it’s not green sludge.

BLEEEEEEEEND!!!

Blend all the delicious ingredients together. It may take a while and you’ll have to push the ingredients down further. Er, I know you’re smart enough to know how to use a blender but I’m not and it took me a while. haha.

Oh, and I almost forgot one more thing. I like lifting weights and I like protein so I add a scoop of Whey to my smoothie too.

ARGHHHHHHH

Just one scoop and then remix it.

Whey Action Shot

I should have taken a good after shot with it in a nice glass, but alas I was running late this morning and had to bring it to work with me again.

The finished product

I filled up my bottle with green sludge goodness, and had a little bit left over which I quickly sucked down. I really enjoy making these and they are a fun way to get in some veggie servings without even thinking about it. The only problem I really have with them is they are high in sugar/fructose, but this is my main source of carbohydrate for the day. The rest of my meals tend to be high in fat and protein. Of course I try to include vegetables as the main source of carbs the rest of the day.

I encourage anyone to try this and experiment with it. See what you like and what you don’t. I made a few bad ones before settling on what I like. Blueberries overpower almost everything so I didn’t use those anymore. Kelly tried chocolate whey powder in hers and it wasn’t that great. Kelly’s version uses almond milk too.

Have fun and experiment. Let me know if you already make these and what you throw in it! And if you don’t make them yet and give it a shot – let me know how it goes!

And lastly:

You can't resist these eyes, Sean.

I let this guy lick up some of the remains a couple times… not a good idea unless you like taking care of green liquid poop. So if your pet is finicky, don’t let it lying around. lol