Fruit, Spinach, and Yogurt Smoothie

There is much to love on Pinterest. But today I'm going to tell you about one thing I do NOT love: those bogus posts that a) do not link to any kind of real page, b) do not look in the least like the actual thing you make--as if they took a stock photo (yeah, they probably did) and posted it for whatever lame/lousy recipe they made, and c) do not in any way, shape, or form actually work.

Let's take that hair straightening tonic I made last week for example. It called for 2 Tbsp brown sugar and 1 C warm water. Shake together, spray on hair, comb through, and--boom--straightened, shiny, supermodel hair. I like to consider myself a thinking woman. I should have realized that brown sugar + water equals stickiness (do I or do I not have 4 young children?). And, yet, there on the pin was a picture of a girl with the most beautiful, shiny, straight hair ever. How could I not believe? After the surface of my bathroom was entirely covered in a thin layer of sticky (from spraying my long, thick hair with sugar water), after my hair was not straight and distinctly crunchy, and after I felt like I needed a another bath from the sticky mist wafting down to my arms and everywhere else, I realized that some posts on Pinterest aren't really posts at all. What they are exactly, I'm not sure. I would call them advertisements because they do everything an advertisement does--give you an unrealistic picture of a subpar item or idea. But there's nothing for sale so I don't understand what is to be gained by posting bad advice with gorgeous picture. Anyone get it?

Okay, okay, so why the rant? Because I planned to make a greenest of green green smoothie. I even wanted to call it that. To look at the deep green elixir on Pinterest that seemed like it must have been formed from the rivers and greens of the garden of Eden itself, I was a little surprised at the light greenish, (kind of sort of almost brownish), speckled with pink drink (doesn't make for the best post title, does it) that I wound up with. It just didn't seem quite as virtuous as the lovely shot o' green pictured here (which, incidentally, also has no real post to go to--hmmm). But I drank it anyway. Almost all of it, as a matter of fact. And it was very very good (just like the garden of Eden after all). And then I realized that for breakfast I'd already consumed 1 apple, 1 banana, 1/2 C strawberries, 1 C plain yogurt, 1 C spinach, and half an orange. Welcome 5 fruits and vegetables and one healthy dairy into my January system. And thank you.

So although you don't get a Greenest of Green Green Smoothie, I present to you the Light Greenish (maybe a little brown on the color spectrum) with Specks of Pink Smoothie. Bottoms up.

Fruit, Spinach, and Yogurt Smoothie
adapted from random post-less pin on Pinterest so go ahead, pin this instead
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cost: $1.55 for about 3-4 C
apple: .50, banana: .15, yogurt: .40, strawberries: .40, orange: .10

1 generous C spinach (mine was actually a combo spinach, baby bok choy, and baby chard because I'm an  amazing human being--or maybe because I stumbled upon such a big bag of greens at Walmart last week by accident)
1 apple (I used a very sweet pink lady--pink lady I love you)
1 banana (mine was frozen, but doesn't have to be)
5 strawberries (frozen)
1 C yogurt (I used full fat)
1/2 orange (I sliced the rest and fed it to the minions)
1/2 C water (maybe in a high-end blender you can skip, but mine wouldn't blend without this)

Blend. If you've got a mediocre blender like me what you want to do is pulse it a few times and then start blending on a low-ish setting until it's getting chopped up/mixed. Then up it to a higher setting so that it actually smoothie-i-fies and you don't feel like you're drinking fruit salsa (not that there's anything wrong with that).

PRINTABLE RECIPE