Green Smoothies: Life Change

 No lies!  We have struggled with Keith's horrible eating habits for a long time.  At one point he was existing on macaroni and cheese, McDonald's, cereal, milk, and the occasional piece of cinnamon toast.  Ok, that's an exaggeration.  Let's put it this way, months ago we cut him off from Mac and Cheese and McDonald's now he routinely skips dinner in favor of 3-4 breakfasts (eggs, cereal, yogurt, pancakes, toast).  The only vegetable he regularly eats is carrots.  Short of shoving healthy food down his throat we were at a loss and Keith was grumpy and hungry. 

Enter, the Green Smoothie.  I had heard about the Green Smoothie from several (mostly normal) people but it still kind of scared me.  I'm not a big smoothie person and a green one just doesn't seem appetizing at all.  It's basically a smoothies with spinach to make it green.  Allegedly it is delish. I'll subject my children to anything in the name of healthy eating so it was on.

There are lots of variations on the recipe on the Internet, after a lot of pinsearch (that's research on Pinterest!) I found this one.  Once I bought the ingredients I forgot about looking at the recipe and just rolled with it.  Here's the "recipe" and pricing for my first batch.
A couple of handfuls of fresh spinach (0.29)
Some OJ (.10)
Frozen peaches (.50)
Frozen pineapple (.52)
Banana (.28)
Total $1.69

That's a Daddy serving.  All three kids can split one and be satisfied (or so they've been told).  I still think it's a little pricey so I tried a Costco version and got it down to less than $1 per serving.  I also froze about 30 servings. 

The verdict is in: they love it. We call them Shrek smoothies and they beg me to make them every day!

Variations:
Protein powder: I mostly make them for snacks after school. If I know Keith isn't eating what I'm cooking for dinner then I add some protein powder and milk.
Yogurt: They liked the vanilla yogurt addition.
Cucumbers!: My large freezer batch also included cucumbers and strawberries. You can use any light colored fruit.  Dark berries will make it an odd color (if green isn't already odd enough).
Sweetener: There were a couple of batches that needed a squeeze of honey or agave.

I have yet to drink one.  I've tasted it as I was making the smoothie and it's good.  I just have no desire to consume that concoction or really any smoothie for that matter.  I also don't really like ice cream and fried food so there you go!