Put spinach in fruit smoothies

Moxie confirms that you can't taste spinach when it's blended in a smoothie (she includes some nice looking recipes, too). My kids would view a green drink with suspicion, but perhaps yours won't?

UPDATE: My son is a huge fan of the Greensicle, a kale-plus-fruit smoothie sold at Sip. He balked at first, but when I refused to buy anything else, he went for it. And loved it.

My attempts to make green smoothies at home haven't been as successful, but that's because my blender doesn't puree everything smoothly. Tiny bits of chopped leaf = yuck. Sip employees and several friends swear by the Vitamix blender (to the point of rabid passion), but I can't bring myself to spend that kind of money.

Any other blender recommendations?

Related: Baby food fruit sweetens smoothies

Comments

[Lauren]

Oh if you put in some berries/watermelon/pineapple, etc they won't even notice the spinach

This is totally true. Drank spinach & blueberry & soy every day of my pregnancy - tasted great. Good with mango juice, too.

[Nick]

Do you use cooked or raw?

[hedra]

And how do you keep them from seeing you do it? (My kids seem to know when I'm about to be sneaky, and pop up in the kitchen juuuust as I'm about to put something 'icky' in something they love. Sigh.

[Jill]

hedra, bags of frozen spinach tend to get clumps anyway. Can't you just reach into one and quickly put a lump into the blender? Frozen, cooked, raw, its all good for you, but cooked and frozen seem easier; it takes so much raw spinach space-wise to get a good serving. Also, try using carrot juice in smoothies or any other juice drink. Lots of good vitamins there too.

And see Asha's post about green eggs and ham for St. Patrick's Day. Pull out Dr. Seuss and let him be the inspiration for making green food. "Kids, what else besides eggs could we make green?"

[KT]

This works with cabbage too - I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true. Anyway, red cabbage matches color well with fruit smoothies, and Napa cabbage provides very little color, if you're trying to be sneaky.

[Moxie]

Nick, I've been using raw baby spinach, but the person who gave me the tip uses frozen.

Hedra, I pretended I was washing the dishes (everyone wants to help! no one notices anything else as they fight over the step-stool!) while I put spinach in the bottom layer of the blender, so by the time my super-sleuth turned his attention to the blender all he could see was fruit on the top. Also, I dimmed the lights.

[Parent Hacks Editor]

Ack! E. coli outbreak in raw, bagged spinach! Proceed with caution.

http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2006/09/spinach_alert.html

[Patrick Fitzgerald]

Terrible news, apparently a spinach smoothie has been implicated in the death of a 2-year-old: http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/09/22/tainted.spinach/
Kyle became sick September 15 after friends said his mother had blended spinach into a smoothie for him.