Saturday, 6:45am, and I’m blending this in my socks while my nine-year-old hunts for her mouthguard before netball warm-up at the Broadmeadow courts. That’s the real test of a recipe in my house: can it survive being made half-asleep, in under five minutes, with someone yelling about a missing shin pad in the background. This one does.
A green breakfast smoothie sounds like the sort of thing that belongs to people with more bench space and fewer opinions at the table than mine. But avocado and mint together is genuinely lovely, not virtuous-tasting in that grassy, punishing way some green smoothies go. The avocado makes it silky rather than thin, the mint lifts it, and the banana means my eldest drinks it without commentary. My youngest won’t touch anything with visible flecks of herb in it, so for her I blend it longer and don’t mention the mint at all. She’s none the wiser.
Why avocado earns its place at breakfast
Avocado gets lumped in with treat foods sometimes, which never sat right with me. It’s mostly monounsaturated fat, the kind eatforhealth.gov.au associates with better heart health markers than saturated fat, and it’s got a reasonable hit of fibre and potassium too. In a smoothie it does the job cream or yoghurt might do elsewhere, giving you that thick, satisfying texture without needing a tub of anything. That’s the bit I like: one whole food doing two jobs.
If you want the fuller fibre story, we’ve gone into more depth over on why fibre matters more than most of us think, and it’s worth a read if breakfast in your house tends to be a piece of toast and a prayer.
The Tuesday-night version of this recipe
Here’s how it actually plays out at my place. On a Tuesday night I portion the frozen banana, baby spinach and mint into snap-lock bags or small containers, one per person, and shove them in the freezer. Next morning it’s bag into blender, add the fresh avocado half, liquid, blitz, done. No chopping at dawn, no avocado going brown and sad in the fruit bowl because nobody got to it in time.
This doubles well for lunchboxes too, if you’ve got an insulated bottle and a school that allows it. I wouldn’t send it in an ordinary drink bottle for the afternoon; smoothies with avocado do start to separate and lose their nerve after a few hours in a warm bag.
Ingredients
- 1/2 ripe avocado
- 1 frozen banana, sliced before freezing
- 1 cup (30g) baby spinach leaves
- 6-8 fresh mint leaves
- 1 cup (250ml) milk of choice (I use full-cream, my sister uses oat)
- 1/2 cup (125ml) plain Greek-style yoghurt
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds
- 1 teaspoon honey, or to taste
- Juice of 1/2 lime
- 4-5 ice cubes (skip if your banana is already frozen solid)
Method
- If making ahead, freeze the sliced banana, spinach and mint together in a bag the night before.
- Add the milk and yoghurt to the blender first, this helps everything move without the blades stalling.
- Add the avocado, frozen banana mix, chia seeds, honey and lime juice.
- Blend on high for 45-60 seconds until completely smooth. Scrape down the sides once if needed.
- Taste and adjust, a touch more honey if it’s tart, a splash more milk if it’s too thick to drink through a straw.
- Pour into two glasses or one large insulated bottle and drink within a few hours for the best texture.
Serves 2 generously, or makes one big bottle for the car on the way to a game.
What I’d actually serve it with
On its own this smoothie has enough fat and fibre to hold most adults until morning tea, but for the kids I still put something solid alongside it, usually a slice of Golden Door Anzac biscuit from the tin or a boiled egg if we’ve got five extra minutes. If you’re feeding a table of hungry teenagers on the weekend, this pairs nicely with the quinoa breakfast bowl with roasted plums, smoothie for the ones in a hurry, bowl for the ones who want to sit down properly.
A variation worth trying
Swap the mint for a small knob of fresh ginger and the lime for a squeeze of orange, and you’ve got a completely different drink, warmer and a bit more grown-up. I do that version on the mornings I’m coaching under-11s and need something that feels less like breakfast and more like a decision I’ve made deliberately. Honestly, I reckon the ginger version is better for adults and the mint stays the kids’ favourite, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
A small note on green smoothies generally
I’ll say this because someone always asks: a smoothie isn’t a replacement for eating actual vegetables through the day, and I don’t think it should be marketed that way. Better Health Victoria is pretty clear that whole vegetables, chewed properly, come with fibre structures a blended drink partly breaks down. This is breakfast, not a detox, not a cure, just a quick and genuinely nourishing way to start a morning that’s already moving too fast. If you’re after more of that everyday, no-fuss approach to getting more plants into the week, have a look at simple ways to eat more plants without a meal plan, it’s the same philosophy I’m working off here.
Most weeks this smoothie is the thing standing between my kids and an empty stomach at 7:20am on a school day, or between me and a very quiet car ride to netball. It’s not fancy. It just works, which on a Tuesday, or a Saturday before a game, is honestly the whole brief.
— Nicole Barnes, Golden Door Living kitchen
