Kale and Fruit Smoothie!

I am far from a perfect mom.  VERY far!  I make mistakes ALL. THE. TIME.

I’ve yelled at my kids when my patience is short.  I let them watch cartoons, A LOT of cartoons, when I’m having a bad day.  I do not keep the house immaculate.  I don’t really know how to discipline them.  They are not always under my constant supervision, sometimes I sneak away to check my email, Facebook, or Pinterest.  And I do not always feed them the healthiest, organic, non-processed food.

But I try my hardest to be a GOOD mom.  Not perfect, but GOOD.  A mom that cares for her children, and will do the very best to ensure that they feel safe, protected, and LOVED.

Especially under my current circumstances.  There is just SO MUCH going on.  And I am outnumbered, 3 to 1, by kids!  So some things are bound to slip.  And then of course, the “mommy-guilt” sets in…

Again, I try to remind myself that our situation is far, far from ideal, and that I am doing the best I can right now.  But it’s hard to not feel guilty…

One of the biggest things that I struggle with is the whole “healthy food” thing.  My kids get microwaveable food quite a few times each week.  Especially on the days that I work, and I have 10 minutes to get dinner on the table once we get home.

I hear about things like GMOs, processed food, food dyes, pesticides, hormones, and so much more… It is absolutely overwhelming!  I think it is a full-time job to keep track of all that stuff!

I want to give my kids the very best.  I want to give them a great start on life with their nutrition.  But like I keep saying, we’ve got a lot going on right now, so it’s hard to keep up on all of it.

So right now, my goal is to just give a good balance between unhealthy and healthy.  I can’t be 100% organic, but I also WON’T be 100% processed.  I will do my best to supplement something “good” for every “bad” thing I give the kids.

So this weekend, I gave the kids kale smoothies in attempt to get something healthy in their bodies.  I’ve done this a few times, and fortunately, my picky eaters LOVE them.

I’m not really a recipe follower, I kind of just throw things in the blender, sample it, throw a few more things in, have another sample, and then give it to the kids.  So this is my unorganized attempt at providing any readers with a Kale and Fruit Smoothie Recipe!  Feel free to try it, or just to make up your own recipe as you go, just like I did!

Our smoothies made about 4 servings, and contained:

1) A bunch of kale…  I don’t think it was bad yet, but it had been in our fridge for over a week.  It didn’t feel slimy or anything… Does it look like it was bad?  I washed it, and cut the ends off, and threw it in the blender.  Nobody got sick, so I think it was OK!

 2) Greek yogurt – strawberry flavor.  I used this entire cup.

3) An entire package of frozen mixed berries.  I wish I would have frozen fresh berries to make this smoothie a little more “healthy”, but I think this is better than nothing at all… At least I hope it is!

4)  Just over a cup of 1% white milk.  Sorry, I didn’t take a picture of that, but I’m hoping you know what milk looks like! 🙂

I started out just putting most of the kale, some of the milk, and half the container of yogurt into the blender.  We don’t have a fancy blender, so I kind of had to play with the settings, and stir stuff around to get the kale leaves to start blending.

Once about half the kale leave were getting blended, I decided to throw in half the package of fruit and the rest of the milk.  Again, I would play with the settings, open up the blender and stir/smoosh stuff around with the spoon, and then blend again, until it was all starting to be a “smoothie” consistency.

Then I tasted it.  It tasted pretty fruity, I couldn’t really taste the kale.  However,the kale leaves weren’t blended too well yet, so I was still kind of chewing on the leaves.  I decided to add the rest of the fruit package, the rest of the yogurt, and a few more leaves of kale.  And then I kept right on blending.

When I’ve made smoothies in the past, I’ve also thrown in bananas, fruit/apple juice, and whatever leftover vegetables we happen to have from dinner the night before, including corn and green beans!  The fruit covers  up the taste of the veggies, so it is great for my picky little eaters! 🙂

The kids were playing in the living room while I was making this for them, but they were really excited about what was going on.  The girls kept saying, “We want smoothie, Momma!”  And I kept telling them it was “Almost ready, I’m blending it.”  And then I’d turn the blender on, and when I turned it off they would say “Done blending, Momma?”  But since I was still playing around with the consistency, I would have to keep telling them it would be a few more minutes…  But at least they were excited about it!

Anyways, I finally got the smoothies to a consistency and taste that I was happy with, and poured it into the girls sippy cups.  They LOVED them!  They sat in their little chairs just sipping away!

Violet & Charlotte

Will

Here’s just a couple more pics of the girls enjoying their smoothies.  Violet ended up having 2 full sippy cups of it.  Charlotte had about 1.5 sippy cups full.  I had just poured Will’s smoothie into the empty yogurt container, so that I didn’t have to make a bowl dirty.  I think he ended up having about 1 sippy cup full…

While they were enjoying their smoothies, Violet saw some of the kale in the colander I had used to wash it off.  She asked if she could have one.  I gave a leaf to her, figuring she’d take a bite and then spit it out.  But nope!  She just kept chomping away at it, like a little bunny or something.  She ate almost an entire leaf!  Which is fine with me! 🙂

So that is my small attempt to get something healthy into my kids’ bodies, when I’m not always able to. I really do just want the very best for my kids, and it just really sucks that we were dealt such a crappy hand so early in their lives…  I hope these small things are beneficial to them!

Well, that’s what Me Plus 3 were up to TODAY!

Do you have any other tips on how to get healthy food into my kids’ bellies on a very time-crunched schedule?

~Sarah