You’ve got choices! My recipes are yoga-endowed with flexibility. If you have sprouts, you can and should use them. Of all the varieties alfalfa, broccoli, and sunflower blend well and don’t overwhelm the taste.

If you don’t have any sprouts, you can use common vegetables such as kale and parsley. I prefer lacinato kale also known as Italian or Russian kale (I know its confusing). Then there is the more standard curly kale. If you can’t get kale, substitute with collard greens. They’re all part of the Brassica family that includes cabbage.

Cilantro is one of those love-or-hate vegetables. If you love it, use it like a spice in this recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 cup Alfalfa Sprouts
• 1 cup Sunflower Sprouts (chopped)
• 1 cup Broccoli Sprouts
• 1/4-1/2 cup Tahini
• If substituting use…
• 1/8-1/4 cup Olive Oil
• 1/2 clove Garlic
• 1/8-1/4 cup Tamari
• 1 Lemon, juiced or squeezed
• 1+cup Water (add for pulsing and consistency)

Here’s a quick and easy (but powerful) recipe to get your mornings rolling. It was submitted by Birit Trematore through our submit a recipe page.

Ingredients

• Fill your blender 3/4 full of chopped kale
• 1″ peeled chunk of ginger
• 1/2 a lemon with the yellow rind removed (but leave the white part)
• 1 cup organic apple juice
• a few ice cubes

Fill up to the top of the kale with good water. Blend until the kale is teeny tiny. Strain into a pitcher. Drink soon for maximum energy benefits!

This is sooo easy…everyone has time for it.

This recipe comes from our good friend Ross at energiseforlife.com and is taken from his Alkaline Diet Cook Book that he launched just last month.

It is a combination of the most alkalizing, energizing green foods, is packed full of chlorophyll from the green veggies and gives you a great energy boost!

Ingredients

• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 sticks of chard
• 1 large handful of baby spinach leaves
• 1 cucumber
• 6 lettuce leaves
• 1 broccoli head and stalk

Juice these all together and enjoy the energy buzz! Ross has heaps more alkaline recipes over at his Alkaline Diet Blog.

The sweet and sour of the raspberry and red apple balance the bold flavor of the calcium rich kale. So much so that your skull may distend, jump out of your skin, paint itself in vibrant colors, and dance until dawn…at least that’s what it feels like.

You can check out the ingredients page to learn more about the health benefits. Although, I can’t image you’ll need any more incentive than the former.

Ingredients

• 1 red apple
• 1 cup of raspberries
• 1/8 honeydew melon
• 1 big leaf of kale (stem removed)
• 1 handful of mixed baby greens
• 1 lemon (juice)
• 1 banana
• 1 cup of water
• 1 1/2 cups of ice

Blend well. Get your face skull paint ready. Dance.

This isn’t like the crazy dude hanging out in the ally of your local bodega. That guy probably has a wicked urinary tract infection and is suffering from dehydration. Two conditions that cranberry and coconut water destroy.

As far as taste is concerned, it’s a sweet kick with lingering tart and spicy qualities…the drink that is…

Ingredients

• 1 cup of frozen cranberries
• 1 orange (peeled)
• 1 pear
• 1 lemon (juice)
• 2 leaves of collard greens
• 1 bunch of mixed baby greens
• 3-4 mint leaves
• 1 banana
• 1 cup of coconut water
• 1 cup of ice

Blend. Fill a thermos. Support your local crazy dude.

This is a tough one for a lot of blenders; the pomegranate seeds don’t blend very well unless you have a Vitamix, Blendtec or equivalent. Even with the heavy duty blenders you still get seed pieces but they’re very small and go down easy.

If you’re of the cheaper blender crowd or have a texture issue, just replace the seeds with fresh pomegranate juice or that POM Wonderful stuff.

Ingredients

• 6 strawberries
• 1 cup pomegranate seeds
• 1 apple
• 1 stalk of celery
• 1 peach
• 1 handful of red grapes
• 1 handful of fresh spinach
• 1 banana
• 1 cup water

Blend. Drink. Flex.

The all green green drink smoothie drink.

I wanted something purely green that didn’t taste like the remnants after a lawn face-plant. It worked; sweet, sour, bitter and even a little spicy.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch watercress
• 1 green apple
• 1 lime (juiced or peel the hard outer layer leaving the white)
• 1/4 cucumber
• 4 mint leaves
• 1 banana
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup ice

Blend and add more water as necessary.

Looking for a morning coffee alternative? Something that will still wake you up and give you a boost of energy?

This is perfect. Wheatgrass is pure pick-me-up; pure energy, and with all the vitamin C from the oranges, its everything you need to get up and going.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch wheatgrass
• 2 oranges (peeled)
• 1 banana
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup ice

The amount of grass I used is a 3×3 sprout box. If you have a masticating juicer you can juice 2-4oz. and throw it into the blender. Otherwise you can do what I did and use the whole grass.

Enjoy your perfect coffee alternative.

It’s a beautiful sunny day. You’re driving down the highway with the windows down and nothing but green earth and blue sky on the horizon. You come upon the biggest strawberry field you have ever seen and pull over to steal a taste.

Instead of plucking one juicy strawberry from the ground, you pull up the whole bush; fruit, leaves, roots, dirt. You put the whole thing in your mouth and start to chew.

It’s sweet, bitter, a little spicy and is exactly what this green smoothie tastes like. Delicious.

Ingredients

• 3 strawberries
• 1 mango
• 1 kiwi
• 3 big basil leaves
• 2 big leaves of collard greens (remove stems)
• 1-1 1/2 cups of water

Enjoy.

This one is delicious; even for those that have yet to acquire the green tongue. A sweet green smoothie while still providing the health benefits of kale.

Just a word of warning, kale can be quite difficult to blend if you do not have a super-duper blender (like an Vitamix or Blendtec) so you may want to substitute it with something less waxy.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of green grapes
• 1 pear
• 1 cup of kale
• 1 orange (peeled)
• 1 banana
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1-2 cups of ice cubes

Gulp gulp gulp. Mmmmm….