No fault of the spinach, but it’s been a few years since I could buy the stuff again.

Like five.

And not that anyone wants to chit chat about food poisoning, or bring up images of someone gagging over the toilet, so I won’t go there.  Much. But that’s what happened.  And I’m certain it wasn’t the spinach.  But it came up too.

I’ll stop now.

Because that’s not the point.

And maybe there is none…except to say I like the stuff now–the spinach– and so do my kids…that is, when we ‘eat’ it like this.

We call it ‘drinking a salad’.

We start with spinach.

A whole bunch of it.

Like three handfuls.

And then we start throwing in the other stuff with little regard to order.  Today we’ve got a banana, a quarter piece of apple, a wad of grapes, a tomato and a bunch of frozen raspberry pieces that look like raw ground beef, but aren’t.

And…we’ve got the apple cider.

Which is really the thing that makes this work.  If we didn’t have cider, we’d be digging in the freezer for some sort of juice concentrate and scooping in a couple of tablespoons.

Because you know, they do that.  The Vita-Mix people.  And it’s subtle.

I used to absorb the Vita-Mix demonstrations, hanging on every ingredient they threw in their pitcher, so I could duplicate the thing at home in mine.  Only I always missed something…the taste was always off.

Until I watched more closely and saw the spoon or so of  juice concentrate added quickly while they were talking about healthy living or the nutrition in a carrot.

Here at our house, as long as we’ve got apple cider, we use that.

Here’s a look at the loaded pitcher.

Pretty, eh?

And again with a few ice cubes on top.

Here’s what happens when we flip the switch.

It looks like we’re going to gulp down fresh lawn clippings.

Until it looks instead like we’re actually going to guzzle mud.

But nevermind that.

Because as freaky as this may look, it tastes like berries.

And has been tested six times on kids who won’t spear a spinach leaf with a fork…

But will seriously…

drain a glass of spinach with a straw.

Here’s some ideas, if you get the gumption to try your own Spinach Smoothie.

Start with these:  Spinach, banana, apple cider (they’re the foundation).

And then add what you have from the fridge or freezer:  pineapple, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, tomatoes, carrots, avocado.  Not all of them at once.  But any combination.