I know this is horrible of me to admit publicly, . . . . but here I go. So, I know that our kids should be having 4 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but I don't think I have EVER done that. . . or even come close. They actually love fruit, so that isn't too hard, but we're lucky if they eat four servings of vegetables in a week! With Brett being gone this last week (he's not a veggie fan) I decided to experiment with spinach. I bought a big bag of frozen spinach and was determined to use it in at least two things every day Brett was gone. I succeeded! The boys love smoothies and so I figured I would try putting it in a smoothie first. I looked up some recipes on allrecipes(dot)com and was excited about trying out some of the highly rated spinach shakes. Unfortunately, I made my first attempt just before Brett left. He tried it, and I think it might be hard to convince him to try anything with spinach in a drink again. I'll admit it wasn't that good, which is sadly often stereotypical of 'healthy' shakes and smoothies. It's like there are two standards for good tasting. The normal good tasting vs the healthy good tasting. Their scales are totally different and I'm sad when something healthy is rated high as being excellent when in fact it tastes like barf. . . but it's really good for you so that must mean something right? Not if no one will eat it. Anyway, enough about that. I did a lot of experimenting and I came up with two recipes that honestly are delicious. I think they taste identical to smoothies at jamba juice and if you blend it long enough you can barely see anything green in it. Happy blending. Here you go:
(Noah's favorite thing is helping me make smoothies)
Orange Julius Plus
1 -6oz. can frozen orange juice concentrate
1 cup strawberries
1 -1 1/2 cups frozen spinach pieces
1 banana
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk
1 cup water (opt. - to make it runnier)
Blend it up and serve!
Strawberry-Banana Blast Plus
1 -6 oz. can of frozen concentrate grape juice
1/2 apple chopped into slices or cubes so its easier to blend
2-3 cups frozen strawberries
1-2 bananas
1 1/2 cups frozen spinach pieces
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk (+ or - will determine how thick)
Blend it up and serve!
P.S. Next week I'm going to post amazingly delicious pizza crust and sauce.
2 comments:
yumm! good for you! i have never tried the frozen spinach. i am wondering if the fresh spinach tastes less offensive? maybe when brett tries it again, try using fresh spinach and see if it makes a taste difference. that first smoothie looks delish!
For the record it wasn't so much the taste as it was the green smoothy. . . Unless it's St. Patty's day or I'm really in a Ghostbusters mood my drink just shouldn't be green. :)
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