The Friendly Green Smoothie

Working overtime I've gotten lazy about my vegetables so I'm easing myself, and the children, back into it with a very friendly, Jamba Juice inspired, green smoothie. All the goodness and a spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down. There are a lot of ingredients as I just went grocery shopping yesterday so feel free to take out a few you don't have but get yourself some orange sherbet it's the key to a friendly green drink.

Friendly Green Smoothie

1 celery stick

2 medium juicing carrots

1/3 cucumber

1 scoop of orange sherbet ice cream (that's the Jamba influence)

5 frozen strawberries

1/2 large banana

1 scoop plain greek yogurt

1 scoop vanilla Arbonne protein powder - optional

3 or 4 giant kale leaves (you'll have to squish to fit)

apple juice and water to blend

Very green and very good. I've made it two days in a row now.

Easy Butternut Soup

I'm not a big veggie soup person but last year as I was trying to get my family to eat vegetables in different ways I tried squash soup - and G-boy LOVED it. This was not for dinner tonight, I was just making it to keep in the fridge for the rest of the week but guess who had two bowls for DESSERT!? Yes, G-boy.

And tonight I accomplished my soup in half the time and effort I usually put in so I felt I should share. Normally I peel, chop, boil, then puree. But tonight I slipped it in the oven with my sweet potatoes.....ahhhh, much better!

Easy Butternut Soup

Halve your medium to large butternut squash and lay cut side down on a foil lined pan.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or so until soft.

Let cool and scoop squash from skin with a big spoon.

Put your squash in the blender and add:

3 cups of chicken stock

(vegetable stock if you're a vegetarian)

1/2 cup water

a generous shake of onion powder

a generous shake of garlic powder

a little shake of cinnamon

a little shake of nutmeg

a pinch of salt to taste

Puree in blender until smooth, add more water if needed for your favorite consistency.

Reheat to eat.

After the baking it should just take 10 minutes to put together. No cream and no butter - because it tastes good with out it, and you can use those calories to make the salad taste good! Add breadsticks if you got 'em. Enjoy!

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Citrus-Green Juice

Oh man! I just made a really good smoothie. I wasn't going to share but now I feel I have to. I think you'll like it!

by my estimation it was:

1/3 a blender of kale

3 large beet greens I had left over

3 ice cubes

4 large baby carrots or one large carrot

5 whole frozen strawberries

1/2 can of pineapple + juice

1/2 cup apple juice

1 cup orange juice

makes 2 large glasses

It was more of a juice consistency than a smoothie, goes down easy!

Let me know if you try it.

♥

Oven Chicken and Veggies

I'm on a roll just making stuff up so I tried again.... and it worked... AGAIN!

I usually make casseroles when I bake dinner which means I brown the beef...and then cook a casserole. Or I boil some chicken...and then cook a casserole. They are really good dinners but I'm feeling gipped. I want to put everything in the oven and be done. This took 10 minutes prep, 45 in the oven.

I added Risotto on the side for dinner (my first attempt - totally out of a box) that took 20 minutes of babysitting - so omit that and go for this Oven Chicken and Veggies and a piece of bread.

Bake 45 minutes or so at 350*

Raw chicken breast to feed the family and season with:

- squeeze lemon from the plastic fruit (4 tbsp-ish)

- cumin

- salt and pepper

- dry stuffing mix

Cut in medium to large cubes (pick your favorite 4)

Tomatoes (my garden gave me another harvest)

Sweet potatoes

Carrots

Apples

Squash

Kale

season/toss with:

- salt and pepper

- cumin

- cinnamon

- grape seed oil (enough to get everyone wet)

I figured chicken and veggies could live together in the a pan so the oil and chicken-dripping juices are shared but don't put the chicken on the veggies or they get too done and squishy. Cover with foil.

Half way thru cooking I sprinkled the chicken with two crushed handfuls of dry Stove Top Stuffing. Flip the chicken and sprinkle again with two more handfuls. Put it back in the oven to finish cooking with foil on top. I give the final 5 minutes without foil in the oven.

Pretty easy don't you think?! The apples turned into a little mini dessert in the dinner! That was fun!

And...is that what Stove Top is for?? Well I guess it's for stuffing (duh) but I use the recipe on the back of the box for a good chicken casserole. It has had that job alone for three years in my home. Maybe they figured you'd sprinkle it on chicken? I'm not really sure.

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Strawberry Asparagus Smoothie

Tim hates asparagus so we don't eat it much but I wanted to take it on in a smoothie. I google-looked for recipes of asparagus smoothies and they don't seem very popular. If you want to be daring try mine!

6 asparagus sticks

7 whole frozen strawberries

(I like to defrost, I feel like they have a little more flavor that way)

1 & 1/2 cups of plain greek yogurt

1 big squeeze of the honey bear

1 tsp vanilla

(or just get a sweeter vanilla yogurt)

5 ice cubes

(I always do this so it's nice and cold)

3/4 cup orange juice

1/4 cup water

C baby and Tim(!) approved it. It has a good balance of flavors and a great consistency, just like a healthy milkshake.

Also try my original green smoothie recipes.

♥

Veggie Spaghetti

Having this blog is pushing me past sharing what I do in the kitchen to trying new things! A friend let me borrow Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook - you know sneaking vegetable purees in your kids food and.... surprise, surprise.... I didn't follow the recipe. Problem number 1: I don't have a food processor. GASP! I know. I'm admitting another thing. I have a food blog and I don't own a food processor. I do own the mini chopper from Tupperware so hopefully that helps your view of me.

So anyway, to get around this problem, I'm going to use my blender again! Here's what I did:

half a head of cauliflower

half a blender of Prego sauce

half a red pepper

But I gotta be honest, the pepper flavor wasn't my favorite. The Cauliflower on the other hand was completely hidden. And G boy (age 5) ate 2 bowls. He NEVER eats two bowls of anything! I'm probably most proud of my picture with the parsley flakes on top. I picked up four spice bottles, including the parsley, at Wal-Mart for $.50 each!

And I learned a new tip from my mom after talking about this recipe. Did you know you can freeze green and red peppers? She says you can! So I used half and sent the other cleaned half to the freezer. I'm not going to tell you to freeze everything (like my mom would) because I have about two shoe boxes of room in my tiny fridge/freezer but I do have the money and the freezer space for half a pepper.

♥

Red Beet Smoothies

Hey green smoothie people, have you ever gone red? Try a beet smoothie!

I've done it before, but this time I learned (from The Chew maybe) that you can use the beet leaves too. I didn't know! It all looks so gross I thought I was doing well just eating the beet! I bought these three for $1.50 a bunch.

Wash,

cut the top and bottom off the beet,

peel,

and quarter.

Toss in the raw cut beet and the greens.

I also added:

a cup of yogurt

5 ice cubes

1 table spoon of honey

4 table spoons of lime juice

1 apple cut in fours

(leave the seeds)

4 baby carrots

1+ cups of apple juice

This recipe doesn't hide the beet flavor so you need to like beets at least a little. When I asked G boy if he liked the green or the red better he couldn't tell me as he was gulping it down.

WARNING: Don't serve when the family is all wearing white! My blender makes extra froth on this one where a Vita-Mix would emulsify it better.

I found this website with some great healthy recipes, including a beet plum smoothie. The plum should help with the beet flavor if you need to mask it. I say if the kids can handle it the parents should too...

This website is great to find some nutritional info on your veggies.

Good luck!

♥

Roasted Carrots Save the Day

When I'm a "bad mom" and cook up chicken nuggets and tater tots for lunch I add baby carrots to the pan with a touch of grape seed oil and salt. These cook in the same amount of time as the frozen beige foods and helps this evil meal not be so evil. My kids don't really like hard carrots but will eat them soft-roasted all day. I just started being a roasted veggie fan last year after my friend Christina had her kids loving these carrots. Hope it helps you too!

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The Green Smoothie

You are going to see my eating habits here and they are not similar to Bob Harper's.

I eat cheese on everything, dip my veggies in ranch, and LOVE my burgers and chicken fingers! But I also play volleyball avidly, run 3 times a week with my gal pal, and feel emotionally and physically more fit than ever before in my life. I just hiked/ran Mt. Rose summit yesterday in 3 hours 40 minutes ( I know because we had to pick up G Boy from school by 3! ). The three things I do for my health and the health of my kids:

(1) little to no soda

(2) cooking 90% of our meals at home

and

(3) green smoothies!

I've been asked by a few of my friends how I make my green smoothies - mainly because my kids adore them and we all know how big of an asset that is! Guess what - I don't have a recipe! But for you I'm going to try my best. And the good news is you get to play with it until your family loves it as much as mine. You can be a hardcore raw-foodie in this or go my way and just make veggies taste good for the family.

The general concept is to keep some fruits and veggies in the house (frozen and fresh) and mix and match till your heart's content. You can also add protein power. I have a vanilla powder from Arbonne I like.

My favorites ingredients are kale, apples, carrots, tomatoes, & apple juice; I try to keep these around as much as possible and others like strawberries, spinach, yogurt, and peaches, I use on occasion.

I know some people need more direction that that, totally understandable! So here's two recipes you can feel free to follow or hack:

Today's smoothie with what I had on hand (I'll call it Super Green):

a cup of spinach

(I usually don't use spinach but stole some from dinner at my mom's last night)

3/4 my blender of (un-squished) kale leaves

4 large baby carrots

1 small tomato

1 cup of vanilla yogurt

5 ice cubes

1 cup of apple juice

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As you can see I didn't have any fruit on hand as it's time to go to the store soon and the apple tree in the backyard is past harvest for humans and on to the bird harvest. BUT the apple juice and yogurt will punch it up enough to get those veggies down - and you probably would have fed those items to your kid today anyway.

My more normal smoothie (I'll call it The Awesome Abby):

1 whole apple cut into 4's

4 baby carrots

5 frozen strawberries

3/4 a blender of fluffy kale leaves

5 ice cubes

1 cup of apple juice

1 big scoop of vanilla yogurt

And that's it! Well one more thing - if your blender sucks, your smoothie may too. Serious raw-foodies use a Vita-Mix. If you can afford it, go for it! My husband wasn't going to lay down $500 for a pregnant wife (at the time) who had a juice craving so we ended up buying a Breville from Bed Bath and Beyond. We even were blessed to pick up the floor model for 60% off! I suggest you start with what you have and after the kids drink 30 cups of kale your husband may just start to see the investment!

I'll try to get more green smoothie recipes to you approved by my kids G Boy and C Baby soon. I hoped this helped!

♥

Special Note on KALE: This green seems to last the longest in the fridge. I use a "FridgeSmart" system from Tupperware but my mom just washes and puts into a ziplock bag (wet-ish) accompanied by 3 paper towel sheets. It lasts at least two weeks, maybe three. And there's always a first time, if you don't know what kale looks like go here.