our family, our food, our fun

Monday, February 23, 2009

Health food

So, I have been trying to incorporate more fruits and veggies into our family diet but have found it to be a bit of a struggle to get 6 servings of veggies in per day. In fact, I don't think I have ever eaten 6 servings of veggies in a day in my entire life (unless you count potatoes). So, we decided to make berry smoothies. The girls had a lot of fun throwing their favorite berries into the 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup that I don't know how I lived without before I got one last month. We used 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt, 1/2 cup each- blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries, 1 tablespoon Miller's creamy honey, 1/4 cup wheat germ, and milk to get to our desired consistency. We blended it all up with our immersion blender and it made 5 1-cup servings. They LOVED it! Macey said it was better than cookies! For fun just to try, we added spinach to the leftover serving of smoothie and I thought it was better than the smoothie without spinach. I added a handful of spinach and probably 1/2 tsp cinnamon (since it was only a cup of smoothie) and blended it up again. It is one of those recipes that would probably taste better with lots more sugar and yoplait strawberry yogurt but because this one was so healthy, we'll stick with it. We used frozen berries too- they were on sale for $1.29/bag at our local grocery store.

5 comments:

Aubrey said...

Wow - Good for you. I am starting a square foot garden this year and I am REALLY excited about it. It will really help us eat more veggies plus they will be organic because they don't use fertalizer. Check it out at squarefootgardening.com It looks really easy and managable especially for new gardners like myself. I went to a presentation and also got the book. It seems like this will fit into your new lifestyle. Good for you. Keep it up. Love and miss you - Aubs

Brooke said...

My kids will eat a lot of fruit. Now, if I could only get them to drink a veggie smoothie (love the spinach addition)... great idea.

sallgood said...

Sounds yummy! If you gradually increase the veggies, you can find the right balance where the sweetness of the fruit still is the dominate flavor. Do you guys have a juicer? I love carrot juice with a little apple juice. (I wish I had some right now...)

Unknown said...

1/3 veggies to 2/3 fruit and pinepapple juice, orange juice or chocolate soy milk.

Anything goes, too.

Johnny's favorite is chocolate soy milk, frozen banana, spinach, natural peanut butter, crushed ice and flax seed. good stuff!

Dave Allgood said...

Since we're supposed to eat both fruits and vegetables, try adding some carrots, broccoli, and string beans to your fruit smoothie, then see if Macey still thinks it tastes better than cookies:)