That’s right. I said recipe.
I was in the middle of writing my OCTOPUSSY essay for #Bond_age_ and needed a break. And I figured what better way to break from writing about Bond than to clutter this page with more nonsense. Off the top of my head I had nothing music-related to share so I figured I might branch out a bit into the realm of food. Food blogging is all the rage. And then I figured everyone food blogs, but does anyone food bl-g? I thought not.
As parents my wife and I have struggled with how to get green vegetables into our daughters without tying them down and force feeding them with a tube. If you’re thinking foie gras, you’re on the same page. Our oldest ate vegetables of all kinds for good awhile, unforced and unprovoked, and then one morning realized that in the world of 4yo cuisine she was totally off-base. More than likely when she went to pre-school someone told her about these things called Happy Meals and now she’s on strike. And since the 1yo just imitates the 4yo, she was going to join the picket line sooner or later.
We’re in our third summer of receiving weekly boxes from our local CSA (community supported agriculture). In these boxes we always receive many many many leafy green vegetables. Our response to the tidal wave of greens is to sautee them in olive oil and garlic. This only works for so long. And Kale, in particular, had always been a curiosity. We knew people loved Kale and we were supposed to eat kale. But damn if we weren’t yet on board the Kale parade. One night my wife decided to look up “green smoothie” recipes. We call these smoothies “green” because calling them “kale smoothies” tips off the little people. If they’re just “green,” they’re a color. Not a vegetable. My wife spent a week just throwing green things in a blender with only a rudimentary memory of the recipes she’d read. This came to a head one morning when I came downstairs for breakfast and she handed me a green smoothie. I tasted it and felt like I’d gotten kicked in the testicles. “Dandelion greens,” she said. After that, I took the matter into my own hands. And by that I mean I spent way too much time searching for and assembling a tasting menu of smoothies containing green things. Not vegetables. Again, we have to refrain from tipping off the little people.
The result of my recipe search and my own tinkering is the following culinary delight. Proof: the 4yo even once asked for a refill. And the 1yo will really just drink anything in liquid form, so she’s not exactly a good gauge.
THE “GREEN SMOOTHIE”
Put the following in the blender (liquids at the bottom):
1/2 cup lite coconut milk
1/2 cup water
1 banana
6oz (1 container) Trader Joe’s Vanilla Cultured Coconut Milk (or 6-10oz of vanilla Greek yogurt)
1 1/2-2 cups frozen pineapple (fresh is also good, but I find the smoothies taste better when colder, hence the frozen pineapple)
roughly 2 cups chopped, stemmed Kale (I say chopped but I just tear the leaves off the stems, then tear again by hand)
Turn the blender on low for awhile and then high for a longer while. You want the kale to be sufficiently pulverized. There’s something off-putting about large bits of kale stuck in your teeth during breakfast. Also when we first started these smoothies, we were told to use the leafy kale rather than the curly. But we found that the curly blended better than the leafy. But you know, whatever floats your boat. Likewise with the yogurt. The cultured coconut milk adds some extra sweetness but the Greek yogurt obviously provides more of nutritional balance, because, well, the cultured coconut milk isn’t really yogurt. I don’t recommend the plain yogurt in smoothies for little people as they seem to require that small hint of sweetness that comes in the vanilla.
Enjoy.
