smoothie update

Well, new name, but so far no blog posts! Things have been busy, and I've not made any new recipes lately. Soon, I hope!

I wanted to add a couple of things to my post on the green smoothies. I'll add them to the original post, but here they are as well. These are mostly some things you can think about if you are making the green smoothies for your children.

1) Be sure to rinse your spinach very, very well...EVEN if it says it's washed and ready to be used. Our pediatrician gave me that advice when I shared we had been making them for breakfast. He said their digestive tracks are more sensitive than ours...and then told me he has an awful green smoothie story that he wouldn't go into detail about...but it had to do with a child and e-coli from the spinach. YIKES! Needless to say, I'm re-thinking the green smoothie thing and when we do drink them, I'm washing the raw spinach very, very well! I felt like it is important to pass this on to those of you who might be giving these smoothies to your children, whether you were doing this before I posted about it or you learned about it from this blog.

2) A friend recently mentioned that you can be even more "deceptively delicious" by adding avocado into the smoothie. It adds great texture, lots of good fat that is good for the childrens' development (and for adults, too!), and is tasteless. Actually, I noticed a slight avocado aftertaste when I tried it the first time, so I've started to pour my portion of the smoothie without the avocado, and then I'll throw in about 1/4 of an avocado and re-blend it for my child.

3) You can throw in any fruit, juice, applesauce, etc. for the smoothie if you don't have yogurt or strawberries or traditional smoothie ingredients. Kids love these, and any healthy ingredient will benefit them! Be creative.