Quick, easy, yummy recipes and green smoothies

For some reason, blogger won't let me comment right now, so I just wanted to give you guys a heads up that I'll be posting a lot more quick, easy, yummy, tried and true recipes in the coming days, partially because they are wonderful and I like to share and partially so I don't forget how to make them when Joey's gone. Its funny how many times I ask Joey to remind me what temp I cook dishes at, etc, when I'm cooking and I won't be able to ask him when he's gone, so I'll post them on here so if I forget, I can just reference my blog. I'll be using a lot of quick, easy, yummy, tried-and-true recipes while Joey's gone as I think that sticking with what the girls are familiar with and already like will be less stressful for the kiddos than giving them a bunch of new stuff to try, which sometimes stresses my middle daughter out. Not only am I going to add some more recipes, but I'm also going to add a new category that's "quick recipes" so you can find the quick, easy recipes quickly.

I am going to introduce some new stuff to the girls while Joey is here, though. If they like them, then they will be "tried-and-true" recipes by the time he leaves, so we'll be able to stick with them then.

The first thing I'm going to introduce is green smoothies. I've seen people talking about them on Diaper Swappers before, but wasn't inspired to try them until my sister said she was going to try them. I did some research about it today and the idea behind green smoothies (which don't have to be green by the way) is to add green, leafy veggies to your diet without tasting them. In theory, and keep in mind that I haven't tried these yet, spinach has no detectable flavor when added to a smoothie.

My typical smoothie recipe is 1/2 cup yogurt, 1/4-1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup frozen fruit (peaches or strawberries and pineapple typically), 1 tbsp flax seed meal and 1 tbsp honey for one serving.

According to my research, to add greens to it you put the greens in with the liquid and blend that together before adding the rest of the ingredients. I also saw that if you add berries to the smoothie, it makes the smoothie a different color besides green (purplish), thereby creating a non-green green smoothie. So if your kiddos freak out at the color green, its rather easily masked.

You can also do green smoothies with bananas in them in place of the yogurt to make them creamy and you can use water in place of the milk to make a lactose free green smoothie, but I'm going to start with what I know that I like, add the spinach and see what kind of difference the spinach makes in the taste. I keep saying spinach because that is what my sister was adding to her smoothies, but in my research today I found you can use any kind of greens, although different greens have different levels of taste. Some are bitterer than others, so you'd have to add more honey/fruit to counteract the bitterness.

True to the creed that variety is the spice of life, my research also indicated that the best way to do green smoothies is not to eat today what you ate yesterday, meaning if you had a strawberry banana spinach smoothie yesterday, then today you should have something different -- different greens and different fruit. But since we don't eat a lot of greens and I'm just starting out and figuring out what recipes to use, etc, and since I just got back from grocery shopping for this week, I'm going to be making smoothies with spinach thru at least Friday this week and then I'll get a variety of greens and fruit for next week.

The best reason to incorporate greens into your diet is because they are invaluable at removing toxins from your body. Kale, for example, has so much fiber that it can soak up several times its own weight in toxins from your body. And less toxins in our bodies is always a plus in my book. Plus, if my girls will actually drink it, its another way to sneak veggies into their diet, which is especially important for Evie, who is very anti-veggie.

So the girls are having their nap time now. When nap time is almost over (since its important to drink them soon after making them to preserve their nutritional content), I will go into the kitchen, whip up a batch of green smoothies and then bring them downstairs for snack time. I'll let you know how it works out for us and what recipe I use (if it turns out to be any good).