I love smoothies. Especially green monsters. I hate making them. I’m way too lazy for that. And I especially hate cleaning the blender every time I make a single glass of cold blended fruit.
So of course I have a short cut solution.
I’m the queen of short cuts. Like making big batches of oatmeal overnight, huge pitchers of iced coffee, and pre-mixing my oats. I figure every minute I save is a minute I could be doing something else.
There are 2 main smoothie problems:
1. Pulling out tons of ingredients and mix-ins.
2. Cleaning the blender every.single.time. {and running the blender early in the a.m.}
Smoothie Solutions
The solution to the first “dilemma” is this:
– Pre make your smoothie base into smoothie cubes:
1 bag of baby spinach
1 bottle coconut water {I used Zico}
1 cup almond milk
1 packet Amazing Grass greens powder
2 scoops Sunwarrior Vanilla protein powder
Plus anything else you always put in your smoothie, like oatmeal, chia seeds, wheat germ, etc.
Blend, blend, blend. I can actually get the spinach all chopped up when I use this method instead of navigating chunks through my straw because I can just let the blender run without worrying about waking someone up from their beauty sleep. *cough cough husband cough*
Pour your spinach mixture into an ice cube tray. The silicone ones make it a lot easy to get the cubes out. Muffin trays work in a pinch.
Freeze your spinach cubes, then separate into plastic baggies. When you’re ready to make a smoothie, all you have to do is grab the spinach cubes, whatever fruit you want, and mix away. You don’t have to pull out all the separate ingredients again.
Of course, that doesn’t solve my 2nd problem. Using the blender every single time.
So solution two:
Start with the green monster base mix from above. {I usually just keep half from the original batch in the blender.}
Toss in your flavor of the week. I went with mixed berries this time: blueberries, a couple cherries, raspberries, and strawberries. I used about 3 cups of frozen fruit, plus a banana. I also like doing banana peanut butter, orange peach, etc.
Blend like you’re making a regular smoothie, then do one of two things {three if you drink some right away}:
– Pour into single serve, freezable glasses. My glass of choice: a mason jar. {You can easily shake it up when you’re ready to drink.}
OR
– Pour into ice cube trays/muffin tins like above, then store in baggies in the fridge.
{Small cubes will thaw faster, big cubes will thaw slower, so how much time you have determines what size you should make.}
Move the glass, or put some of the frozen smoothie cubes in a glass, and put it in the fridge overnight. By morning it will have partially thawed- enough so you have a smoothie and not juice.
If you’re going to use the smoothie as a workout recovery drink, leave it out on the counter during your workout so it will thaw faster.
If you really wanted to, you could pop the cubes back in the blender and mix it up, but I’m lazy remember? That defeats the whole purpose of not cleaning anything.
Mmm green ice cubes.
What are your tips for keeping things simple in the morning? Or not doing dishes? 
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