I’ve posted several recipes for sweet green smoothies and those remain my favorites. But every now and then, I like to switch up my vegetables and try something new. This smoothie is for folks who are serious about getting a big nutritional punch out of a drink!

The taste is similar to V-8 juice, minus the crazy amount of sodium that’s in the regular variety of that drink. This version also doesn’t contain tomatoes.

Fair warning: the ingredients in this drink made my non-green-smoothie drinking husband wrinkle his nose. But the taste is mild and no one vegetable is overpowering.

One of the more unusual ingredients is cooked beets. You can find these in many large supermarkets. I found mine at Trader Joe’s; they come in small vacuumed-packed containers. You could obviously cook your own, but I like the convenience of the prepared version.

Are you ready? Here goes:

Ingredients:
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 banana
1 cooked beet
2 stalks celery, roughly chopped
1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1-2 handfuls of spinach
1 TBS ground flax seed (optional)
1 cup water
ice

Directions
Place water and all other ingredients into a high speed blender. Blend for 30 seconds or until you reach the consistency you desire.

So what are you getting out of this drink? Well, the beets contain potassium, fiber, magnesium and iron, to name just a few benefits. As vegetables go, they’re also quite sweet. The celery is a good source of vitamin K and the carrots are rich in beta-carotene. Blueberries have superstar status when it comes to their antioxidant properties and bananas are high in potassium and vitamin B6. Like the celery, spinach is a great source of vitamin K. Ground flax seed is a good source of Omega-3 fats, so I usually add a tablespoon to all of my smoothies. You could also add a tablespoon of chia seeds if you have those in your pantry.

Body Boosting Smoothie

Enjoy!