Green Smoothies

My green smoothies are not fancy. But usually they are good and always full of spinach. You can use other greens, but I mostly stick to spinach. If I drank them every day, I would mix it up. And if you need exact measurements, you may want to go somewhere else because I have never measured a single ingredient for my smoothies. Hence the reason they are usually good.

liquid (I use vanilla soy milk, rice milk, water or {rarely} pineapple juice)

spinach (about 2 GIANT hand fulls)

fruit

I blend the spinach into the liquid for a few minutes. Then I add my fruit and blend until smooth. Sometimes the fruit is frozen, sometimes it's not. If I use the soy milk, sometimes all I add is a banana and it's awesome. Sometimes I add an avocado or coconut milk for extra creamy and fattening smoothies. (We like fat around here.) I have learned because bananas are such a strong, sweet flavor, they mask any and all hint of spinach. (Which makes it more likely that the husband will enjoy it, the kids don't mind the spinach.) I also think bananas taste better if they have been frozen. That could be my imagination, but it could also be that they are riper than the green ones I usually have available to eat. Sometimes I'll do strawberries and bananas, sometimes peaches, sometimes just berries, sometimes tropical fruit, etc. Also, I really only buy my spinach at Costco. It's organic and a giant tub is the same price as a little bag from the grocery store. However, I rarely am able to use the entire tub before it goes bad, so I take the remaining spinach, shove it into a ziploc and freeze it. It tastes just the same in a smoothie. You can't really go wrong. Okay, yes you can, but if you use common sense, it makes going wrong slightly more difficult.

In other food news, I have been doing really, really great at making and sticking to my dinner plans. For two weeks, I've stuck to my plan. Prior to that, I'd been averaging probably one real meal a week for a month (oh, December). I think the trick for me is to have good items on the menu so I have more of a desire to make them. The other night I made pizza and it was SO good. I did a few BBQ chicken (bbq sauce, mozzarella, chicken and red onion) and a few mushroom (homemade red sauce {canned tomatoes, spinach & spices}, mozzarella and mushrooms). They were both delicious.

Last night I made the roasted root vegetable salad that I love. The turnips were from our garden (see the fresh dirt on their roots?) so that was fun.

Jason and I didn't think it was the best batch of it that I've made, but Hazel couldn't eat it fast enough. She also took the time to pick every single grain of rice off her plate. Beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips and wild rice, she loved every single bite. A few stow away grains of rice fell off her as I set her into the tub. You better believe she snatched that rice right out of the water the second she noticed it and gobbled it up.