For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to get back into drinking a green smoothie every day. Several years ago, I had two years of daily smoothies under my belt and could see the health benefits in my nails, skin, and hair. And who even knows what magic the ultimate green drink was working beneath the surface!

And I felt great all the time.

I got out of the habit, however…and getting back into it is a bit of a trial because those blended salads are not exactly….delicious.

I mean, they’re not terrible, but there are a thousand other things I’d rather eat.

For a while I was telling myself I’d get all my greens and fruit in by eating big salads, but, in truth, I just can’t eat that much salad. And I rarely eat (or even think about) fruit unless it’s in a smoothie.

Sure, avo toast for lunch and a tofu-vegetable stir-fry for dinner is perfectly healthy, but even if you add a snack of hummus and raw vegetables, how and where do you fit in the fruit? And what about those essential leafy greens, not to mention turmeric, ginger, flaxseed, amla power….and berries?! And if I don’t make a smoothie, I have to think about whether I’ve had each of these apparently essential foods each day.

So I challenged myself to drink one green smoothie every day for three weeks and, after a few false starts, I’ve made it to eight days straight. My strategy is that I have to have a green drink and ONLY a green drink before I have anything else. Since it takes me a good part of the day to get through a blenderful of green smoothie, it’s pretty much all I’ve been having until dinner.

And, by the way, sometimes my green drink is actually a red drink….if I use a fresh beet, that is!

And, since you asked (haha), here is my standard recipe:

My Ultimate Green Smoothie

2 – 3 cups water

1 raw beet

1 raw carrot

1 cup cucumber

3 cups mixed greens (spinach, kale, arugula, etc.)

1-inch chunk of ginger

1-inch chunk of turmeric

a dash of black pepper (the piperine in pepper enhances curcumin absorption in the body by up to 2,000%)

1 banana

1/2 cup blueberries (or other berries

1/2 cup frozen pineapple

1 mango or apple or orange (or whatever fresh fruit you have on hand)

1 medjool date

1 TBS flax seed

1 Brazil nut

1 tsp amla powder (apparently, the most powerful antioxidant out there!)

1 big glug of liquid chlorophyll

Then I’ll add a handful of whatever microgreens and sprouts I having growing and another handful of any leafy greens that look good in the deck garden. I’ll also add a handful of ice cubes to make it nice and cold.

Sometimes, it’s just too much to get through and I refrigerate some for the next day, but I usually put a pretty good dent in it!

And since a picture of my green (sometimes red) drink is not particularly inspiring, I give you, a video of our adorable new puppy–Poppy the Bugg!!

And, if you haven’t already guessed, the song of the day is Jennifer Lopez’s “I Luh Ya, Papi”: