Obviously I had to share pics of the cats in the snow yesterday, so this book review got bumped to Tuesday. Next up…

Green Smoothies: Recipes for Smoothies, Juices, Nut Milks, and Tonics to Detox, Lose WEight, and Promote Whole-Body Health by Fern Green

I’m several years late to the green smoothie craze on Pinterest, but I’ve been thinking of replacing my breakfast yogurt with a smoothie, and the bright clean look of this cover grabbed my attention. The same look continues throughout the interior, and it’s a great layout – with all the ingredients laid out visually, you can pick out recipes based on what you have on hand with a quick glance. Some instructions are vague like “2 handfuls of strawberries” but the photographs are helpful as well as pretty. (Would you consider 6-7 strawberries to be 1 handful? I would think 4 tops, but I guess I have a small hand?)

The cover is misleading, since it’s not immediately obvious that smoothies are only 1/3 of the recipes, with juices and milks taking up the rest of the book. I don’t have a juicer and I’m definitely not interested in a juice detox (or milks and tonics, for that matter) so I could really only use a small portion of the book. If you’re interested in the whole kit-n-caboodle, then you’d probably get a lot more bang for your buck, but I just concentrated on the smoothie portion.

I tried a basic smoothie recipe and it tasted pretty good, although I have to say it looked nothing like the picture in the book. I wasn’t put off by the brownish-green color since that’s what I assume all green smoothies look like more or less, but it was pretty strikingly different from the promised peachy-pink. One recipe makes a pretty large portion, and it kept in the fridge for a few days which was nice. (Through no fault of the book, I’m not sure I’ll be keeping up with the smoothie-replacing-breakfast idea since I was starving by mid-morning… it’s still a great way to eat a lot of greens I probably wouldn’t get in my regular diet, but it’s hard to feel full.)

Overall, it’s a pretty book and a nice reference but probably not a necessity for your cookbook library with so many free recipes available on Pinterest.

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***I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.***

Quick note: I don’t have any intention of monetizing my blog, but I’m trying out the Amazon affiliate program on posts where I’m already linking to Amazon products – mostly books, of course! If you purchase anything on Amazon.com after clicking the link, I will get a small referral fee. Consider yourself disclosed!