Whole Food Green Drink—how all this craziness got started

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My friend Kari was laughing the other day about the crazy accidental beginnings of GreenSmoothieGirl.  I’d forgotten all about it.  It was a little like that old commercial of the girl with the chocolate bar running smack into the guy with the jar of peanut butter—WHAM!  A star is born.

I was sitting out on the front porch getting some sun on a summer morning.  I’d just put my new concoction in the blender, a primeval ancestor of the much-improved-nutritionally green smoothie I now avidly promote.  It was canned pineapple juice with home-sprouted alfalfa seed and lots of spinach in the blender.  I made this thing every day for years, after this auspicious day.

As I was drinking it, my one-year old, then-only child, Kincade, tottered over, peered into the glass, and said, “Whazzat?”  In a rare stroke of genius, I replied, “Ummm . . . ice cream?”  He, of course, wanted some, and I decided to make a play for a long-term, scarcity-oriented nutritional strategy:  “Nope.  It’s just for Mom.” 

I made a great show of enjoying it and finally relented as he longingly looked at me—and the glass of green stuff—with big, baby doe eyes under his crazy orangutan hair.

I gave him a little taste in a miserly, rationing fashion.  He loved it, and that was that—liquified spinach became a regular feature at our house until I discovered my green smoothie template recipe that allows for vastly more variety, more plant fiber, and no nutritionally marginal canned pineapple juice.  Until its obsolescence, we called this whole food green drink Green Cream for 10 years, in honor of Baby Kincade falling for my sucker line.

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Robyn Openshaw
Robyn Openshaw
Robyn Openshaw is the author or editor of 10 titles, including the bestselling book The Green Smoothies Diet, and the course 12 Steps to Whole Foods. She’s passionate about overthrowing the Standard American Diet by teaching people to eat more whole foods easily, inexpensively, and deliciously. She’s the mom of 4 competitive athletes as well as a runner, cyclist, skier, and competitive tennis player. She travels all over the world speaking to sold-out audiences and studying non-toxic cancer treatment for her next project.

2 Comments on "Whole Food Green Drink—how all this craziness got started"

  1. Robin says:

    That is too cute! Love it.

  2. Amber says:

    My 2 1/2 yr old son calls it a “freezy” because I always put a few ice cubes in it to cool it down. He loves it and requests it every day. My 10 month old daughter is drinking one sitting here on my lap while I type. :)

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