Thursday, January 4, 2018

Snow and Smoothies

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Three inches of snow and life in MD comes to a screeching halt.  Some of it has to do with temperatures much lower than we are used to and high winds, most everything was cancelled today, as the New Englander in me scoffs. Then I take a sip of decaf, lean back in my chair and think...an unscheduled day...hmmmmmm...the possibilities.

I'll write a blog, make Turkish Roasted Eggplant Salad a la Moosewood, aimlessly watch the birds at the feeder, play in the snow with the dog, and test smoothie recipes that I may do with one of my after school groups--no sense in making the kids drink stuff that's disgusting and turning them off.

Smoothies are very interesting things.  I was going through recipes online yesterday and wondering at the variety of options and thinking--people actually drink this stuff??? There are the standard sugar bombs that are mostly fruit, and some that add all sorts of odd stuff that would require a trip to Whole Paycheck and have questionable flavor, and then there are all those that the authors claim are kid approved.  Hah!!! I don't know where they are finding the kids who approve these things, but they certainly are not the kids who attend the after school programs.  One called for frozen butternut squash, frozen raw cauliflower, and frozen kale, and then adds oat milk, with Medjool dates for sweetness (Have you priced Medjool dates lately??) and a little pumpkin pie spice. So, this parent/blogger is still making baby food, but adding pumpkin spice and feeding it to her 4 year old.

I can already see the looks on the kids faces if I were to attempt to get them to make it.  I can also already hear all the requests to go to the restroom to hide from it.


I skip right past all of the recipes with essential oils, funky mystery protein powders, or anything that smacks of "medicine". I am looking at ones where I start with fruity, creamy flavors and slowly add a little veggie element.  The longer term object is to get the kids to transfer the stuff they learn to home, and if the parents have to buy a million new things, it just isn't going to happen.  A smoothie with fruit with a few salad vegetables tossed in or peanut butter--those might work--but not turmeric, spirulina, maca, and bee pollen.

At our house, we specialize in banana-peanut butter with cinnamon  or chocolate smoothies, they are kid approved, and usually made after said child has not been feeling well and hasn't been eating much, because it's a huge hunk of calories and fluids. If you have a truly "kid approved" smoothie recipe, I'd love to see it, but all the ingredients have to come from a standard grocery store and not be expensive.

I now pause in writing to try one of the recipes.

The chocolate/berry/spinach/banana/yogurt smoothie gets 2 1/2 thumbs up out of three. The half is because the kid is recovering from a really bad cold and can't really taste anything.  She said she thinks she would like it, if she could taste it. I was going to photograph it, but it had the color of refried black beans, maybe a blind taste test would work better. The recipe called for vanilla yogurt, but I only had plain goat milk yogurt, so I substituted that and added extra vanilla and a little of the forbidden--sugar! I didn't have just frozen blueberries, so I did a frozen mixed berry. We generally don't keep ice cubes in the house, so I used a frozen banana to thicken...as I have said before, I can't follow a recipe. Our blender is showing its multi-decade age, so I blended the spinach and soy milk together first, because I have done this before and chunks of floating greens are not appealing.

Now just to create a nutrition lesson to go with it!

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