Strawberry-Banana-Kiwi 'Greens' Smoothie

Since I found out I'm expecting, I've made a much more diligent effort at eating healthy, especially making sure I get plenty of fruits and vegetables every day. Eating healthy has never come easily to me (I just have too much of a sweet tooth, and I love carbs :P)... but being pregnant makes it easier (and harder sometimes, when foods just won't go down), since I know my choices not only affect me, but also my child. I have a particularly hard time with green leafy foods, and I'm supposed to eat at least two servings each day. The easiest way I've found is to blend them into a smoothie with some yummy fruit to cover the taste.

I've been making a smoothie every day for the past few weeks; I've had some hits and some misses (more misses than hits, unfortunately, and forcing it down just doesn't work as well as it used to ;), but today's smoothie was a home run!

I started out to make the Skinny Strawberry Sunrise Smoothie from The Nutrition Twins blog, but by the time I was done, well... it just wasn't that.

One thing that I learned last week from my midwife is that when you eat the dark green, leafy veggies, you should also add vitamin C (i.e. lemon juice on your spinach salad, orange juice in your smoothie, etc.) to help your body absorb the iron in the greens. (One cup of strawberries contains 80-90 milligrams of vitamin C, and kiwis bring 64 milligrams each to this delicious smoothie.)

This recipe also has some other great things for you, like kefir (if you haven't had it, it tastes like a drinkable yogurt, and you can usually find it by the yogurt in the grocery store -- it's delicious and full of probiotics).

The smoothie could easily be made vegan by substituting the milk and kefir (maybe coconut milk yogurt and almond milk). I know you can make your own kefir out of coconut milk, but I don't know if that is sold anywhere.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Prep Time: 5-15 minutes

Total Time: 5-15 minutes

Serves: 1-5 (about 5 cups total)