Another smoothie gets its picture taken

My blender might be my first/oldest appliance, now that I think about it. It was the perfect college gift. If you had a blender in college, I figured, it meant you were healthy and liked to have fun, because it can be used for both nutritional smoothies and blended margaritas. That's how I intended to use mine, at least. But I was never really satisfied with the way it blended ice - it left large ice chunks in a watery mess. So I primarily used my blender for a smoothie concoction of cran-raspberry juice, yogurt, frozen berries and banana during my senior year of college. I did this a lot and felt healthy.

When I noticed my pants getting tighter and examined my diet, I realized how much sugar I was consuming each morning. Since then I've equated smoothies with dessert and consume them as such, i.e., almost never. For the last decade, my blender has lived in a dark cupboard and is used occasionally for blending soups and other odd-jobs.

Randomly, on Thursday, some online health food gurus began working their ways into my brain. I needed to get more greens with every meal, they said. Smoothies were the way. On Friday, I made a smoothie. But it was a grown-up one, with gobs of spinach, some blueberries, banana, kefir and maca powder. The gurus also said you really need a high-powered blender, but since I didn't add ice, my trusty Oster pulled through just fine. The result: kinda brown, not too sweet, a little nutty and tangy. Thick and luscious.

I'm not sure it's the answer to my weekday breakfast, because my stomach started growling an hour earlier than normal, so if I want to keep this up I'll need to experiment with things, perhaps adding more protein or eating something in addition to the smoothie, or just be more prepared to have a morning snack.

If you want to try my version, here's the approximate recipe. Both the kefir and maca powder were purchased at Trader Joe's. 

2 cups of spinach

1/2 c. frozen blueberries

1 banana

1 c. low-fat kefir

1 T. maca powder

1/2 c. cold water

Serves 2