The Organic Climber – Blogging about climbing, RAW foods, vegetarianism, running and cycling.

This smoothie was pretty much an accident, but a good one if you ask me. Sunday afternoon I was making some Kale Chips, and as I was tearing off the leaves I kept having small pieces that were to small to make chips out of, so I would just toss them in my blender which was right in front of me, after all was said and done I had a small hand full of kale greens in the bottom of my blender.

After that I decided to make my salad for the next day and had a fuji apple I sliced up to put in the salad, but an entire apple was going to be too much for the salad, so I tossed about a 1/2 – 3/4 of the apple into the blender as well. In addition to the apple I tossed in 1/2 an avocado as well. At this point I thought I had something pretty good going, so I continued adding ingredients to the blender. When all was said and done I had added 4 TBSP of honey, 2 bananas and a cup of almond milk.

The finished smoothie originally only had one banana but the taste of the kale was still very strong, so I added one more to smooth things out a bit, for those of you that like a strong “greens” taste to your smoothie you may consider not adding the extra banana, but even with two bananas the smoothie still had a bit of a “green” taste to it, but not overwhelmingly so. Just perfect in my book.

The final recipe:

• 1/2 – 3/4 of a fuji apple chopped

• 1/2 an avocado

• 2 bananas

• 1 small hand full of kale

• 4 TBSP of honey

• 1 cup of almond milk

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth

Nutritional Benefits: Kale is one of the most nutrient rich greens you can eat. It contains almost all of your daily requirement of vitamin C, it also provides loads of vitamin A and K, it is also high in fiber as well. Additionally kale contains phytonutrients, which help increase enzymes in the body that ward off harmful carcinogens. The plant is also rich in calcium, lutein (which helps improve eye sight) and iron.

I love discovering new smoothies on accident. I will likely be making this one a lot more since I don’t really care for the taste of kale by itself.
Even though the University of North Texas Mean Green lost Saturday night I still decided to name this smoothie after them; I think they will end up having a decent season.