2 Spinach Recipes to Boost Your Morning Energies

Especially in the last days, due to some overload of work, baby screams and other life assignments I cannot delegate to anyone, I felt like all my energies are just out in the wild, leaving me completely alone to deal with the everyday life nasty challenges. But despite all odds, I keep being optimistic by nature, trying to find the best ways to challenge the lemons life throws on me once in a while.

As usually, being creative and offering myself something good - and a bit sweet too - is my answer to all those problems. Although I do have my second thoughts about spinach, I've tried to do my best to include it at on our menu at least once the month, with an easy recipe that the baby loves too. This time, I was looking for an overload of energy and iron, which the spinach contains in big chunks, can balance my deep fatigue. In combination with other healthy fruits, I created fast two good recipes to boost your mornings with lots of good and healthy energy.

Surprisingly for me, the spinach is blending perfectly, the metallic taste being taken over by the combination with the other ingredients. Instead, it offers a good colourful healthy basis for the smoothie. 

Spinach, banana and pomegranate milk smoothie

Ingredients

2 medium size bananas, cut into chunks

1 cup spinach, clean

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

1 cup milk - the same amount of water can be also used

1 full tablespoon of brown sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

Add all the ingredients to the blender. Mix them at medium speed for 2 minutes. Let it rest for a minute. Because the pomegranate do have some small seeds which might be annoying, you may consider using a strain to clear them out. Serve it cold or at the room temperature.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Serves: 4 full glasses of smoothie

Spinach, raspberry and banana smoothie

Ingredients
2 medium size banana, in chunks
1 full cup of fresh spinach leaves, cleaned
1 cup raspberry, cleaned
2 tablespoon brown sugar
2 cups water

Directions
Add all the ingredients in the blender and mix them at medium speed for around 2 minutes. Serve it fresh, or leave it for a couple of minutes in the freezer. It is a light, delicious and very fresh smoothie. Baby fully approves it too!

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Serves: 4 big full glasses of smoothie

Easy spinach recipe

I confess that I am not neutral when it comes to spinach. Although as a child I loved the watch the cartoons with Popeye the sailor, I wasn't such a blind admirer to follow his eating habits too, mainly his love for spinach. When I started my own foodie adventures, I rather tried to find reasons for not eating it, but somehow it was a very twisted argument: although my warning were scientifically based, it had to do only with the ready made frozen products - which I do not like anyway - and not with the fresh spinach. 

In fact, I was quite afraid to prepare a recipe from scratch. I had no idea how to mix ingredients, for how long to cook the leaves, what spices to add. It is a very common occurence to me, when my lack of experience in tastes and foods operates as a deterrent for improving my cooking skills. But I am brave enough to fight my fears therefore, I decided last week to do from scratch my own recipe of spinach.

The list of ingredients was very easy:

- 150 gr. fresh spinach leaves. I cleaned them throughout under cold and warm water several times and then chopped finely

- 3 big garlic cloves, finelly chopped

- 100 ml. walnut oil

- 1 tablespoon za'atar

- 3 big scallions, finelly chopped

- 100 ml. butter milk

- 50 gr. Emmentaler cheese, shredded

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Directions:

Add the oil, za'atar, garlic and scallions in a pan heated at 250C. Mix well for around 5 minutes. Add the spinach leaves, batch by batch, and mix every time well. At the end, add the butter milk and the Emmentaler, and keep mixing. The dairy ingredients will give a special milk consistency to the ingredients.

Cooking time: 15 minutes

To be eaten warm, with some tomatoes slices, for the decoration and more freshness too. It can be accompanied by meat, pasta, and even fish. I personally eat it as a stand alone meal, but I was so excited by the results that I was hardly thinking about any foodie match.

Right now, I feel that I have so many open options to try that most probably I will keep sharing even more spinach-based recipes in the next weeks!

Bon Appétit!