How to Make Healthy and Beautiful Smoothies

Originally published in April 2010

In my book, any smoothie that's worth writing about starts with ripe bananas. You can use room temperature or frozen banana slices - both impart natural creaminess like no other fruit can.

Before we get started, here's a quick look at how I like to store bananas:

Storing bananas in this fashion - with the convex side up - helps prevent unnecessary bruising and brown spots in the flesh. Soft, mushy brown spots in bananas may not be a big deal to some people, but they just don't fly in our home.

To make visually stunning smoothies that even the pickiest of eaters won't be able to refuse, preparation is key. You want a variety of colorful fruits, some frozen, and some at room temperature.

Here's what we had to work with today:

Ripe, organic strawberries from San Diego:

Sweet, frozen mango chunks:

Frozen wild blueberries:

And of course, some ripe banana slices:

It's best to have all of your fruits laid out and ready to go before you start blending - this will make it relatively easy to combine different colors to make your custom, beautiful smoothies.

Now bring out your blender and start with about two ripe bananas, sliced:

Add about two cups of frozen mango chunks to your bananas:

It's fine to use room temperature mangoes and frozen bananas - we just happened to have frozen mangoes on hand. The idea is to create a cool and refreshing smoothie without diluting flavor by using ice.

Next, bring out your favorite type of milk - we're partial to unsweetened almond milk.

You want to add enough milk to cover about half of the fruit - this is typically enough to churn all of the fruit into a creamy smoothie.

So here's the base of your smoothies:

This makes for fine baby food, by the way.

Now fill each glass up about half way.

If you have some mango smoothie left over, add a teaspoon or tablespoon of nutrient-rich green food powder.

Each pound of the green food powder that we use is the result of juicing and drying thirty-three pounds of fresh, nutrient-rich greens, so adding just a small amount to your smoothies is an excellent way of ensuring regular intake of a wide variety of minerals, vitamins, and cancer-fighting phytonutrients.

And what kid or picky adult eater isn't intrigued by a light green smoothie?

Getting back on course, add a cup of fresh strawberries (or any other variety of berries that you have on hand) to your blender (after you've given your blender a quick rinse).

Add milk to about the half way mark.

And blend on high speed for about 15 seconds or until you come up with something like this:

And now the second best part of this whole process - add your strawberry smoothie in a slow and gentle drizzle to your mango smoothie until you get this:

Beautiful and fun, right? Trust me, if you have children who like cookies, candy bars, and potato chips more than fresh fruits, this is the way to get them loving healthy smoothies.

You'll have some strawberry smoothie left over. Add a cup of frozen blueberries and blend on high speed until you create this:

You know what's next, right?

So there you have it. A relatively simple and fun way to make gorgeous, nutrient-dense smoothies that will help fuel good health for you and your loved ones.

And now the best part of making these smoothies - standing back and seeing your loved ones enjoy the fruits of your labor.

In our home, we call this "being too busy for small talk."

Hope you and your family and friends have some fun with smoothie making.