April 27, 2010

The Little Green Drink

I stole this blog post title from my friend Annette, who wrote about this same thing recently. I've long heard that a great way to get kids to eat more greens is instead to have them DRINK more greens. And as the Happy Box people tell us, many greens are best enjoyed in smoothie fashion.

Well, I had never actually tried this, though I thought it was a great idea. Spurred on by Annette's post...AND by BOXES of greens from last week's Happy Box delivery (good heavens, how much lettuce, spinach, kale, and cabbage can one family eat in 7 days?!), I decided it was high time we tried this out.

Yesterday was our first attempt. I didn't let the kids see what I was doing, heh. Into the blender went:

* 7-8 strawberries
* 2 bananas
* 1 cup of orange juice
* about 1/2 cup of plain yogurt
* some ice
* and kale...lots of kale...all the way to the top of the blender.

I set the blender on high and let 'er rip until you couldn't see any individual pieces of green--it was just all one smooth shade of green, not unlike Elphaba's skin tone in Wicked. I poured a big cupful into a ginormous cup with a lid and straw so the kids couldn't see what was in it. Then I made them each take a big sip. After I heard all their excited reactions, I told them they could each have their own cup and straw. They laughed at the Yoda coloring, but they drank it all up! I never did tell them there were veggies in it!

Annette recommends some other healthful additions, none of which I have on hand at the moment. But as she pointed out, the simple fruit and greens combination gives so many good vitamins and nutrients!

I made another smoothie recipe this evening to go with dinner--I had made salad for Ted and me, and since our kids aren't big salad fans, I decided why not let them have smoothies?! They thought they were getting away with no veggies for the evening, ha! I did the same thing as last time, only I just had one banana left, so I used the rest of our strawberry yogurt in place of the plain yogurt. It was just as tasty.

I look forward to more experimentation! This will definitely help us use up all of the Happy Box ingredients, methinks!

3 comments:

taylordi said...

Can't wait to try this! Maybe, just maybe Tabitha will drink it and get some green veggies. Meghan does okay but Tab it another story!

As For Me and My House said...

Way to go Little Green Drink fans!!! Cheers! (It was super fun to read this by the way :)

taylordi said...

Tried it today and Meghan and her freind loved it! Tabitha tried it shuddered and turned bright red. Sigh, she's the one I really need to drink this.