The regular consumption of cruciferous vegetables is linked with lower rates of many chronic diseases, including cancer and heart disease. These cruciferous green smoothies offer a generous boost of nutrition. If you don’t care for salads, drinking your fresh greens is a great option. Unlike many smoothie recipes, these are not a bunch of fruit and just a handful of greens for color. These smoothies are an excellent nutritional boost with lots of greens and enough fruit to make it a treat!
You can easily experiment with the amount or kind of greens, and the amount or kind of fruit. Sometimes we like to add a 1/4 cup of blueberries to the bok choy and napa cabbage recipe.
You may not have seen this combination of greens used in smoothies before. You can also use all bok choy or even all napa cabbage, or increase the amount of kale while reducing the cabbage or bok choy. (Kale and the cabbage give a lot of density when you use them all by themselves.) Another option is all or part spinach. When using the kale or spinach, it is especially nice to add about an ounce of frozen pineapple. Regular cabbage is too strong flavored for a nice smoothie, but napa cabbage is very mild.
The ingredients listed are by weight, not fluid ounces.
2.5 oz regular bok choy (including white stems) or baby bok choy can also be used
1.5 oz. napa cabbage
.5 – .8 oz kale or without kale, increase the cabbage by .5 oz.
(All of the above greens may be replaced by 4 oz. of fresh spinach)
2.5 oz frozen mango chunks
2.5 oz frozen bananas chunks
1 oz frozen pineapple if using kale or spinach
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk (or milk of choice)
1 tsp vanilla — I prefer Cook’s vanilla powder.
pinch of ginger powder for shakes with regular bok choy is optional but good
For a very thick smoothie, you can add 2 teaspoons of flax seeds or chia seeds. You definitely will need a high-powered blender for that and may need to blend a little longer, HOWEVER, you do not want to blend until your smoothie gets warm!!
These smoothies contain high amounts of minerals (especially the spinach ones) will over time cause a build up on your blender cup that is very difficult to remove. So it is always wise to blend the shake, pour it into a glass container, and immediately wash your blender cup. Do not leave the smoothie sitting in your blender jar.