I have always been a fan of smoothies but I tended to stick with a basic version of milk, bananas and strawberries, which my son still loves. But increasingly I have been seeing green smoothies gaining popularity outside the crunchy vegan circles and with the winter stretching ahead of us (subscribe to this week’s newsletter for more tips to survive winter), I thought they might be a different way to pack in the vitamins and get my six a day (in Denmark we are recommended to get six portions of fruit and vegetables into our diet daily and the WHO recommend nine – which most people think is impossible). I have spent  two weeks fine tuning my green smoothie ingredients (cucumber was not a hit) and method and I love them now. Not only that, my green smoothie actually holds a whopping eight servings of fruit and veg, so with a homemade vegetable soup for lunch (2 portions) and two vegetables with dinner I am exceeding the WHO’s recommendations. Time will tell what impact this will have on my health but I am feeling pretty virtuous at the moment.

So here are my favoured ingredients – spinach, wedge of pineapple, apple juice (planning to mover to coconut water this week), juice of half a lime, and juice of half a blood orange (this was because I had them in the fruit bowl), leaves from two sprigs of mint, half a thumb of ginger, one kiwi and about five frozen strawberries.

Like many people, time in the mornings is at a premium so I prepare my ingredients before I head to bed. I peel and chop the fruit and ginger and put with the half of citrus fruits (to squeeze in the morning) and mint leaves in a bowl in the fridge ready for the morning.

I have found that by blitzing the 200ml of juice with the large handful of spinach first in the blender (which I didn’t for the photo above) before adding the fresh fruit gives a better consistency and then adding the frozen strawberries last. It loses it vibrant green look with the strawberries but they make it taste a  lot nicer.

I add ginger as an extra health boost to the smoothie. I thought about adding chia seeds which seem to be popular but at 60kr for a small bag unless they are the elixir of life, I think I will give them a miss.

People often argue that fruit and veggies are expensive, especially here in Denmark, but the ingredients for a week’s worth (and more in the case of some ingredients) cost me 18kr per smoothie, which is pretty cheap for what you get, and you could half this cost by shopping smarter in places like Netto, Kiwi or Aldi (I’m lazy and use Nemlig.com).

Have you joined the green smoothie revolution yet?

*if you like my Kale sweatshirt mine is from Modcloth (currently out of stock there but available here) and apparently worn by Beyonce on a music video – I wonder if she’s into  green smoothies too?