Have your kids drink their vegetables…

My kids are usually very good eaters when it comes to getting their fruits and vegetables, but occasionally they will boycott and go on a mono-diet of hidden-liver meatballs or Mickey Mouse pancakes. In those instances I make up a big batch of juice. On the days when they resist even drinking fruit and veggie juice I pull out my bag of tricks.

Here are a few of my favorite tricks:

• Change your language: Instead of “Do you want some juice?”, ask “What color would you like your juice to be today?”. Works like a charm and tricks them into thinking that they are running the show
• Take them shopping and let them pick out the fruits and vegetables. We used purple kale today because that is the current favorite color.
• Make it into a tea party and use fun glasses and tea pots. I can get my kids to drink an entire batch this way…even my son likes tea parties!
• Let them help put the fruits and veggies into the blender and then help strain the juice with a spatula and strainer (see photo below)
• Let them make up what “kind” of juice to make. Today we made “Green Witch Juice” (go figure, since witches are feared in our house lately!)
• When all else fails you drink it and tell them that they can’t have any….reverse psychology will have them begging for it!

Here is what we made today:

• 2 large green apples (lower sugar)
• 5 large leaves of purple kale
• 2 stalks celery
• 1/3 cup lemon juice (to give it a lemonade flavor)
• 1 cup water
• a small piece of fresh ginger

Core the apples. Cut the spine off of the kale. Cut the white part off the celery. Blend all ingredients until liquefied. Pour the blended mixture through the finest strainer you have, over a bowl to catch the juice. Do what you want with the pulp, I use it to make frozen baby food. Now put it into fun glasses and enjoy. The batch we made this morning lasted about 4.3 minutes, after they fought me about eating some fruit with their breakfast. Sneaky, sneaky.

P.S. This is superior to buying the V8 junk from the store, because about 30 minutes after you juice fruits and vegetables their nutritional value starts to diminish. Think about how long those V8 bottles have been on the shelves. Plus, many brands add high-fructose corn syrup to add that hyper-palatable sweet flavor.

       

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Kale basil salad with balsamic bacon vinaigrette

I needed a salad to smother with balsamic bacon vinaigrette so I dug through my fridge and found some leftover kale and basil.

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch kale
• 1 package basil
• 20 pitted kalamata olives
• Balsamic bacon vinaigrette
• 2 tsp Sea salt
• 1 Tbsp Lemon juice

Directions:

Tear up kale and basil in a large bowl. Add salt and lemon juice and massage it with your hands until the kale is broken down a bit. Slice olives. Top salad with olives and dressing. You can also top with bacon crumbles and sliced hard-boiled egg. My kids ate all of the bacon I cooked up so I had to go without (gasp!). If you eat dairy, I bet this would be delish topped with feta or blue cheese!