Skip to main content

Tropical Green Smoothie - Banana and Coconut

I've tried to convince you to drink green smoothies before, and I'm not giving up!  They taste bright and refreshing, and on the mornings after a particularly rough night in baby land, they give me energy. 

This mix gets it's tropical taste from the combination of banana and coconut oil, as well as the usual suspects of spinach, almond milk, and a handful of ice.  It would also be delicious with the addition of pineapple or mango.



Let's go back to the coconut oil, though.  According to Organic Facts.com:
The health benefits of coconut oil include hair care, skin care, stress relief, maintaining cholesterol levels, weight loss, increased immunity, proper digestion and metabolism, relief from kidney problems, heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, HIV and cancer, dental care, and bone strength. These benefits of coconut oil can be attributed to the presence of lauric acid, capric acid and caprylic acid, and its properties such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, soothing, etc.

That's a whole lot of good stuff.  There are a bunch of sites that suggest a multitude of uses for coconut oil, such as this one, this one, and this one

I use it for cooking, sometimes to replace butter, melted with chocolate to make a shell coating (amazing on ice cream, or in a bowl with a spoon...), and mixed into a smoothie, as I did here.  Topically, I use it as a lip balm, and it's the best one I've ever tried.  Smoothed on my skin, it helps my perpetually dry hands, and works very well as an after-shave leg balm.  It definitely tastes and smells like coconut, though, so if you like that, great!

Let me know if you have any other favorite uses for coconut oil, or if you give it a try!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

A few weeks ago we went into Boston for the day. After chasing little people up, down, and around the Children's Museum, watching Colin climb up three stories on a jungle gym and James' excitement at a room filled with golf balls, we went to Flour Bakery for lunch.  I had the Roasted Sweet Potato sandwich, and it was amazing. I just checked the menu , and it looks like they don't offer it right now, but lucky for you I made a salad that's just as good.  The original sandwich was roasted sweet potato, apple, walnut pesto, blue cheese and kale on wheat bread.  I took some liberties, changed up some ingredients, and made it into a salad. Roasted Sweet Potato Salad Romaine and Kale, shredded Olive oil Sweet potato rounds, roasted Apple, sliced Avocado Roasted tomatoes Goat cheese Balsamic Vinegar Drizzle kale and romaine with olive oil Sweet potatoes - coat slices or cubes with olive oil and roast at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Tomatoes - toss with olive o

Lemon Garlic Baked Salmon

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, and ate all the cookies.  I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but all the treats I've been eating for the past month have been making me feel a little sluggish.  When I saw a one day "cleanse" I thought I'd give it a try.  Loosely, it called for drinking hot lemon water first thing in the morning, a Glowing Green Smoothie for breakfast, Ginger Lemon Cayenne Detox tea and vegetables for lunch and dinner. My day went like this: First thing after my run: Hot Lemon water - This is a nice way to warm up.  I do this all the time. Breakfast: Glowing Green Smoothie - I liked it a lot.  Very refreshing and hydrating.  Wished I hadn't baked donuts the night before as they were staring me down on the kitchen counter. Lunch: Spicy Mulligatawny Soup - I'm pretty sure that's not what they meant by "salad," but I went with it. Snack: Ginger Lemon Cayenne Detox tea - Zingy and invigorat

Baby Breakfast Cookies and Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes

I make these recipes for Colin, but grown up people might like them too! Colin was never big into baby food purees.  I fed him one jar of food back when he first started eating solids, mostly so that I could have the cute mini jar to use for lotion.  I think those "complete meals in a jar" are kind of creepy.  Chicken dinner puree?  No, thanks.  For the most part he has eaten fruits and vegetables, either raw, steamed, roasted or sauteed.  A few things have been big hits and I use them as staples: broccoli and roasted sweet potatoes.  He's big in picking things up himself.  We can get into ruts, however, one of which resulted in his eating an entire roasted butternut squash over a two week period. He likes to help in the kitchen, which means he wants to see everything that's going on and touch it.  Cooking with one hand while holding him with the other can be a bit of a challenge.  Sometimes I can convince him that the view from his chair is pretty good, and he tak