Embracing the Green Smoothie

I've tried so many times and so many ways to embrace green smoothies because of how healthy they are. Most everyone sings the praises of kale, but kale, the backbone of most things green is not my friend. I actually kind of hate it. Especially the texture of it.

I needed to kick my 3 time per week unhealthy drive-thru EggMcMuffin breakfast habit. I wanted something quick and easy that I could grab and go with in the car on the way to yoga class. I need something that provides energy but does not sit heavy on my stomach during class. So I set out to create a smoothie.

My Dream Green Smoothie had to meet a couple of criteria:
1) I do not own a Juicer because I don't want to deal with that mess, maintenence and clean-up, so the smoothie ingredients had to liquify in my [kick-ass] Breville blender and the clean-up had to be nothing more than rinsing the blender's pitcher under running water.
2) I did not want to have to baby the smoothie by starting/stopping/starting again to add liquids, nuts or veggies one at a time. I wanted to be able to spend a half-hour cutting up all of the ingredients on Sunday night for a weeks worth of smoothies and then combine piles into individual portions that I could put in baggies to grab from the frig, dump into my Breville, pulse a few times and then hit the "smoothie" button and walk away to get dressed for yoga.

Here's my Green Smoothie recipe, and dare I admit I acually LOVE it:

1/2 carrot, peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 cucumber, peeled and quartered
1/4 lemon, peeled
1 inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled
1 small apple, peeled, quartered and seeded
2 stalks of celery, cut into chunks, obvious strings stripped away
1/2 frozen banana (optional)

Toss it all in the blender at once. Pulse several times. Hit "smoothie" and let it go. My Breville automatically goes into smoothie mode and then turns itself off. I don't have a Vitamix, because my Breville does it all. But I guess the Vitamix is the gold standard among the hardcore smoothie crew.

You can add 1/2 frozen banana for extra sweetness which I used to think was the trick to disguising the kale, but I actually prefer how fresh smelling/tasting, lemony tart and ginger zingy this smoothie is with just a hint of sweetness from the apple and carrot. I do not taste the kale. At. All.

Do you have a smoothie recipe to share with me?