Green Monster Attacks...and it's delicious

I tried my first Green Monster. No, it's not a type of jello shot, pesto eggs, or green popsicle but instead it's a spinach smoothie. Let that sink in...a SPINACH smoothie. Yeah, I was equally horrified and disgusted but I talked myself into trying it (HA! take that inner fatty!). The girl who created it--check out her website here--writes about healthy living and with the help of other readers, has created tons and tons of recipes for many kinds of Green Monsters. I tried the virgin monster because I was still very wary of the idea of shoving over 2 cups of spinach in my breakfast...bleh!
I woke up this morning (after having dreams about the most delicious chocolate cookies that were made into sandwiches with layers of buttercream icing...oh man, I was sad to wake up). I went to the freezer and found this:

Why is there a banana in my freezer?

Ladies, this is what happens when you leave your husband alone for 2 weeks. Apparently the banana was going bad and he thought I could use it for banana bread so he froze it for me. Weird. Anyway, so a virgin green monster needs ice, spinach, a banana, and soy milk (or any kind of milk you want to use). The recipe also has an optional addition of flax seeds but I have no flax seeds. First you layer the spinach, then banana and finally the milk and blend for a good minute. I blended mine for a while because I wanted to pulverize the spinach into submission.

Before spinach is beaten into submission

After the beating, don't let the fluorescent green color scare you off

After you have blended your ingredients, add the ice and blend once more and pour it into your fanciest glass and TaDa! Green Monster has landed.

My Rainforest Cafe fancy glass, the bottom use to light up but sadly it does no longer

Now I fully expected this to taste not just bad but really, really bad. I took my first sip and big shocker: it tastes like a banana smoothie. Seriously! I drank that sucker down in like 3 minutes. However, I will admit that the last sip was mainly foam and it tasted a bit spinach-y. I can't believe that it is 9 in the morning and I have had over 2 cups of spinach already. Another big plus is that the smoothie has only 180 calories, give or take depending on type of milk and the size of the banana--did anyone else giggle about the size of banana? no? just me? okay then-- plus I feel super full. To please my inner fatty, next time I think I'll try one of the chocolate or chocolate/peanut butter versions also I think it would be really easy to just toss in whatever fruit you have on hand. Click here for all sorts of Green Monster Recipes!
Logan has a big doctor graduation thing tonight so I must go gussy myself up.
Off to Gussy,
Steph

Virgin Green Monster

• 2 cups organic spinach
• 1-1.25 cups milk (your choice of cow’s milk, soy, hemp, almond, rice, etc)
• 1 tablespoon flax (optional)
• 1 banana
• ice

Place the ingredients into the blender in the following order: 1) Flax, 2) spinach, 3) banana, 4) milk. The reason for this order is so the heavier ingredients weigh down the flax and spinach and keep it from flying up around the blender and sticking to the side. Blend everything on the highest setting for 1 minute or so. Finally, add ice and blend on the ice setting.