Gluten Free Fruity Green Monster

I've mentioned in recent posts that I've become sort of a smoothie aficionado. Recently, I've begun drinking smoothies twice a day--as mealtime replacements for breakfast and lunch. Naturally, I'm always looking for ways to amp up the smoothies so that I don't get bored with them. That's how this fruity green monster was born.

When I first decided to replace my meals with smoothies, I was a bit wary of consuming only fruits and no vegetables. Through link parties and Pinterest, I found that you can put all manner of loveliness into smoothies! For the first week, I played it safe and only stuck to things I knew I would like. Then I found an intriguing recipe for a green monster and thought, raw spinach in a smoothie? No way, Jose!

But I did it. I purchased a bag of frozen leaf spinach and willy-nilly tossed a few chunks of frozen spinach into my first green monster. Big mistake. I've since learned that the best way to use frozen spinach in a smoothie is to first defrost it! About 10 minutes before I'm ready to make my green monster, I defrost the spinach cubes in a bowl of hot tap water. Then, before use, I drain all the water out.

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 Ingredients:
For the fruity green monster1/2 tsp honey
1/2 cup 0% fat cherry yogurt
1 wedge fresh cantaloupe, diced
4 discs frozen bananas--for a tutorial on how to properly freeze bananas, go here!
4 tsps frozen fat-free natural yogurt -- for a tutorial on how to freeze yogurt, go here!
small handful of defrosted frozen spinach leaves
small handful of frozen cherries

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All right, let's blitz:
Begin layering your ingredients by putting the spinach in first followed by the non-frozen yogurt then the honey. Next pile in the fresh cantaloupe then tumble in the frozen ingredients on top of that.

Blitz, blitz, blitz until smooth. You don't have to serve your fruity green monster in a menacing viva los muertos skeleton goblet... but, why wouldn't you?