Sunrise Spring Smoothie

This Sunrise Spring Smoothie is a great, healthy way to start the day. Of course, they might be even better if I actually drank them at sunrise. Let me rephrase - they’d be great if I could actually see the sunrise. Here of late, it’s just been rain…and more rain. I’m starting to feel like the sun is never going to come out. Even the three daffodils that I planted in our front bed are looking depressed (ok - two daffodils - I cut one of them for the photo shoot for these smoothies).

Regardless of when you decide to drink your smoothie, the sunrise spring smoothie is a beautiful blend of all sorts of in season fruits and veggies. Yes - you read that right. I used a handful of beet greens for the top layer of these smoothies. I love all things beet, and any time I find a bunch of beets that have a great looking set of leaves, I buy them so I can get maximum benefit out of them. Beet greens aren’t very beet-y; instead, they taste like a very green version of, well, greens. Beet greens are full of protein, magnesium, zinc, potassium, and B6. One of my favorite ways of making use of them is blending them into smoothies.

I’m also getting desperate for strawberries. However, we live in the PNW, which means the best berries are the ones we get locally here. They won’t be available until around June. In the meantime, I’m willing to buy strawberries that have been shipped here, but will use them primarily in smoothies, because they just don’t quite taste right yet. I also threw in some more mangoes - I discovered champagne mangoes the other day at Whole Foods. Champagne mangoes are a smaller mango and are definitely sweeter than their larger counterparts. They are perfect for the yellow layer for my sunrise spring smoothie.

As I mentioned in my tropical turmeric smoothie recipe a few weeks ago, one of the best parts of smoothies is that they can be stored in 8 ounce jars and frozen. I pull a smoothie out of the freezer in the morning, throw it in my bag with the rest of my lunch and have both a great lunch treat, but also an automatic ice pack for whatever else I’m taking with me for the day. By lunch, my smoothie is thawed out and all I need to do is give it a good shake and drink it.