Note: When starting out, you will probably want to have a ratio of about 50/50 (half fruit, half vegetables) when it comes to your fruit and your greens. As you get used to the texture and flavor, consider changing the ratio to more vegetables than fruits.
Making Green Thickies
Blend the greens, the banana(s), and the milk, or whatever you are using. You need to do this first because greens are pretty fibrous and need the extra blending time to get broken down enough. Be sure that the greens are broken down enough. You should have a slurry at this point.
Add in the 'extra' ingredients that you want. Some examples are chia seeds, Macao powder, protein powder, ground flax (if you have whole flax, grind it before adding it to a smoothie.), peanut butter, oatmeal, and cacao powder to name a few. Use caution when adding cacao powder. While it adds great nutrients and flavor to your smoothie, you can add too much.
Add your fruits. You will want to blend it until it is smooth (or at least as smooth as your blender can get it). If you have a less powerful blender, you may need to blend for five to ten minutes. With a blender that isn't particularly high powered, it is much more important to blend your ingredients in phases.
If you want, you could add more fruit for color and flavor. Remember, the more fruit that is in your thickie, the more sugar (natural sugar) that is in your thickie. This makes 1 to 2 green thickies. If you decide that it is something that you can do, try making them by the batch, freezing them, and having them more regularly. It helps to become familiar with what you like in your smoothies and thickies before making it in larger batches.
Getting Healthy with Green Thickies
Make sure that you have a large blender with some power. You want to have a blender that has at least 1000 Watts of power. You want the container to be large enough to make a decent-sized batch of thickies.
Have some containers that you will be able to freeze. Make sure that they are BPA free, if the containers are plastic (which is recommended.)
Double your basic thickie (or smoothie) recipe. Once you become familiar with your tastes and needs, you can change the ingredients as required.
Make your thickie in the same order as you did the smaller batches. This eases the workload on the blender and makes sure that your thickie is processed enough so that you don't have anything that is not fully processed.
Using a spatula to help you control the flow, pour approximately the same amount in each container.
Put the lids on the containers and freeze them immediately. There are some that believe that you lose nutrients by freezing. That may, or may not, be true, but you still get more nutrients than you would if you weren't eating them. Freezing them allows you to be able to eat them more regularly which will go a long way to improving your health.
Set them out an hour or so before you want to eat them. You don't need to allow them to completely thaw to eat them. If you add things like cacao powder and/or flavored protein powder, it's almost like having a dessert every day. Another thing that you can do is bring it to work with you, frozen. You could store it in the refrigerator and it should be fine to eat by lunchtime.
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