I have been wanting to cut my food shopping bill down for a while now so when I saw an opportunity to take part in the Live Below The Line project I jumped at the chance. This involved living below the poverty line for 5 days and making extremely frugal meals.
I made this smoothie on Day 1. You can read all about it complete with my costings for each meal. All my costings are in British Pounds, but whatever country you live in, this smoothie is very cheap and will also give you a complete healthy balanced breakfast.
If you are going to drink green smoothies regularly you may notice that the ingredients can end up costing a fair bit. You have to pay for all types of different exotic fruits, different types of dairy free milks, expensive nuts, flavourings and fresh greens which all add up. Once you’ve bought all these ingredients and made yourself a great healthy green smoothie, you may be dismayed to find that you are hungry again within an hour and have to think of another healthy filling breakfast to make to see you through until lunch time.
With this smoothie, not only is it extremely frugal, but it’s a very balanced healthy meal and it will actually fill you up and keep you going until your next meal as it contains oats.
** Please note that this post may contain affiliate links which means that I can receive a small payment if you make a purchase through my links.
I have just used a few simple ingredients chosen for their nutrition and cost, bananas (usually the cheapest fruit, filling and naturally sweet), frozen spinach (usually cheaper than fresh), flaxseeds (one of the cheapest seeds), and basic rolled oats. I blended this smoothie with water. The oats make it creamy enough so you won’t miss the milk.
You can read all my Live Below The Line posts here: How I’m going to live below the poverty line for 5 days, What food I bought to Live Below The Poverty Line and Day 1 Living Below the Line: Finding out what true hunger really means, Day 2 Living Below the Line: Why eating unrefined food is essential on a budget, Day 3 Living Below the Line: Why eating vegan food is cheaper, Day 4 Living Below The Line: Why Variety is the Key to Health, Day 5 Living Below the Line: How to plan cheap healthy meals.
Ingredients
Method
- Blend the ingredients in the order listed.
- If you are making a green smoothie blend the greens and liquid first and then blend the rest of the ingredients. This creates more space in your blender.
- Add more water if required to thin it out.
- Substitute any of the ingredients for whatever you already have.
- If your smoothie is too warm, you can cool it down in the fridge or freeze some of your ingredients before blending.
- You can also replace half of the liquids with ice. Add the ice at the end. It is better to add frozen ingredients at the end to cool the smoothie down.
Notes
If you are new to Green Thickies and have more questions about making the perfect green thickie, please read this guide on How to make a Green Thickie. Or read this guide on How to make a smoothie perfect every time.
Find out more about adding OATS or QUINOA to your smoothies.
The RECIPE for DATE PASTE can be found here.
Suitable for Special Diets: Gluten free (Use GF Oats or Quinoa), raw (Use raw oats/quinoa), vegetarian, vegan, dairy free, egg free, refined sugar free, wheat free, soya free (don’t use soya milk), salt free (don’t add salt), nut free (replace nuts with sunflower or pumpkin seeds. This doesn’t include coconuts)
* If you want to check if you can drink green thickies on your special diet,) please read this first. This will suggest some substitutions so you can still enjoy Green Thickies with ingredients you can tolerate.
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Hi, I’m Katherine. I lost 56 pounds and recovered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by replacing meals with Green Thickies – my original smoothie concept.
kum says
Great blog!
Vegan diet is cruel-free diet, good for our health and planet.
Blog : global vegan fare
nhan says
Best recipe. I will make it. Thank you for share. I will Subscribe and hope more great recipes.
Jenny$1983 says
I’m making this for my breakfast tomorrow, I can’t wait! I love fresh grated ginger (so cheap for a big chunk), and of course frozen bananas, and oats blended together, so this is pretty much my ideal smoothie :)