Mango and wax bean smoothie (yes, I'm serious)

Almost every time I pick up my bountiful basket, I discover some sort of unique vegetable or fruit that I've never cooked with before. This past week it was wax beans. Wax beans are really just green beans that are yellow; and as far as I can tell, they don't taste much different.

At first, I thought I would steam or saute the wax beans and serve them as a side dish - just like regular old green beans. Then, while whipping up a delicious mango smoothie for an afternoon snack, I got an idea. Given the title of my post, I'm sure it's not hard to figure out what that idea was.

I thought the mango/wax bean combo might work for two reasons: 1) since the wax beans are pale yellow, they wouldn't turn the smoothie a strange color, and 2) the sweetness of the mango and banana would counteract any strange flavoring that the beans added.

Although I was anticipating a decent result, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the wax beans actually made the smoothie...wait for it...better! The beans gave it kind of a fresh, herbal taste and cut some of the super-sweet fruitiness. If you don't believe me when I say it was good, here is a quote from my husband: "I would never guess there were vegetables in here if you hadn't told me." He even described it as "delicious." And my kids loved it too!

I can honestly say I might buy wax beans from now on for the sole purpose of adding them to smoothies. I'm sure plain old green beans would work too, but they would throw off the coloring.

Here's what I threw in the blender:

2 ripe mangos, peeled and chopped
1 banana
2 handfuls of uncooked wax beans, ends trimmed
a few splashes of OJ
enough yogurt to make it creamy*
ice

*To make the smoothie non-dairy, I used So Delicious cultured coconut milk yogurt in strawberry. I am so grateful for the new So Delicious line of non-dairy products because they use coconut milk instead of soy. Coconut milk not only tastes sweeter and creamier than soy milk, but it's safer for people with dairy allergies since many of them are allergic to soy as well.

TIP: Since making smoothies can be a pain (all the peeling, chopping, washing, blending, etc), I've started making up a big batch of smoothie mixture without ice, and storing it in a sealable container in the fridge. Then when I want to make a smoothie later in the week, I can just pour some of the smoothie mix into the blender or Magic Bullet, add some ice, and I'm done!