With all the smoothies (and smoothie bowls) in the two cookbooks that I cooked my way through previously (Yum & Yummer and Love Real Food), I’ve tried a number of different ingredient/flavour combinations. I loved those so much and I will include the links below for some of my faves so that you can try them too!

But I’m excited that this new cookbook (Thug Kitchen) has some smoothie recipes for me to try now. This one is called the Jade n Juice which is a green smoothie with lots of fruits to balance out the “greenness”.

Right off the bat, I’ll admit that this wasn’t the prettiest of green smoothies. It was a little on the dark side possibly because of the strawberries, so it wasn’t super vibrant. But I will say that the flavour was on point! There was enough sweetness from the fruits (berries, banana) and juice (I used mango instead of orange), that you couldn’t really taste the healthy greens (I used spinach instead of kale).

Also, I have never added avocado to a smoothie (nor even thought about doing so), but it adds such a great level of creaminess that you don’t get from just bananas. It also helps to replace the need to add any milk to this smoothie – it is dairy free. I will definitely be adding (frozen) avocado to all my smoothies from now on. Last thing is about the oats. I love blending oats into smoothies because it makes the drink more filling and adds lots of extra protein and fibre.

The one issue I had is that my blender isn’t too great so I had to add about 1/2 cup extra water to get this smoothie all blended up. But after that, it came out great. I’d recommend this smoothie if you’re eager to get a quick 2-3 servings of fruits/veggies.

And now, as promised, here are my smoothie faves:

• Cinnamon Almond Green Smoothie – Love Real Food
• Mango Lassi Smoothie Bowl – Yum & Yummer
• Build Your Own Bowl – Yum & Yummer
• Chocolate & Peanut Butter Smoothie – my own recipe