Sweetly, so sweetly, infecting us all…

For the purpose of getting over our stomach bug, we are mostly taking things easy (if by “easy” you mean I did 40 minutes of kickboxing but skipped my walk in favor of steam cleaning the carpet… hm. I may need a tutorial on “taking it easy.”) and trying to clean anything that might be contaminated with our germs.

Also, our appetites are not completely back to normal so I’m mostly eating soup and smoothies. I made a blueberry chocolate smoothie I found here that (surprise!) has spinach in it. It doesn’t taste like spinach at all and features my very favorite Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder. I did tweak it just a bit to suit my taste, so my final recipe was:

Dark Chocolate Blueberry Smoothie with (Surprise!) Spinach

• 1.5 oz fresh spinach (I used the food scale- you could measure 2 cups as in the original recipe, but I’m never sure how tightly to pack them. I used regular spinach rather than baby with no problem.)
• 1 Tablespoon sweetener
• 2 Tablespoons Special Dark Cocoa Powder
• 1 scoop unflavored protein powder (or 1/4 cup plain greek yogurt or silken tofu works too)
• 1 cup frozen blueberries
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup cold coffee (intensifies the dark chocolate flavor. You can certainly use decaf if you prefer.)

Blend until smooth.

This smoothie was very thick and delicious. I enjoyed it more the longer I drank it! I have a friend who is a Dagoba chocolates fan, like myself, who has ideas about experimenting with adding some lavender to this smoothie to mimic her favorite chocolate bar. Hopefully she will report back on her progress!

 Thank you www.metaphoricalplatypus.com and thepinkpeppercorn for making your images available via Flickr Creative Commons.