Wednesday: Spinach Smoothie with Mango and Lime
Today we go tropical, putting some mango and fresh-squeezed lime juice in with spinach and grapes. I’m using Real Simple’s recipe for Collard Greens Smoothie With Mango and Lime and substituting spinach because I don’t have any collards.
Again only 4 ingredients: 5 if you count water. Can you count water?
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 cups stemmed and chopped collard greens or spinach
1 1/2 cups frozen mango
1 cup green grapes
I’m sure that regular readers to my blog have been patiently waiting for one of these smoothies to go off the rails. Today is the day. I didn’t read the recipe carefully and just threw the ingredients into the blender and hit the button. The blender whirred but nothing happened. Like any good computer geek, I checked my connections. Everything is plugged in and powered up. Hit the button again, same result.
In retrospect there were two problems. First I didn’t have enough liquid. Think of the blender blades as a tiny outboard motor. There’s got to be some water in the marsh or you ain’t going nowhere. Second I’m pretty sure I added the ingredients in the wrong order and/or should have blended in stages.
What to do? Duh, get out the potato masher, take off the blender lid and push down risking spinach-mango splatter, mayhem and anarchy. Did it work? Of course not. Einstein said it best: “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
Plan B: Dump mixture into mixing bowl. Add another half cup water. Mix manually. Return to blender. Hit the frozen drink button again. Bingo. Houston we have smoothie!
Even with 1 cup of water the smoothie was thick and the recipe made at least one and a half servings, maybe one and three quarters, when you add enough water to make it a good consistency. Flavor was very good with the major taste being mango/grape. It’s the most filling smoothie so far.
Nutrition: This spinach mango lime smoothie has 183 calories, only 1 gram of fat, 4 grams of protein, 46 grams of carbohydrates (24 grams sugar), 5 grams of fiber and 101 milligrams of calcium. That makes gives it the least calories, least fat, most carbs, most sugar of the three smoothies made so far. It’s competitive in protein, fiber and calcium.