My daughter goes through phases where she doesn’t eat much at all.  It’s not a pickiness thing so much as just a no food thing.  In those times, I try to make what she does consume as densely rich with nutrients. Smoothies are one of those ways. We try to do a green smoothie regularly (I’d love to make one every day but it doesn’t seem to be that often). This recipe has been my most recent green smoothie with LOTS of various veggies.

Here ya go….

I typically do two steps. The first, I juice some of the harder veggies (beets, carrots, etc) then I blend it with some of the softer veggies or fruits (kale, spinach, banana, etc). You could do the juicing part ahead of time and freeze the juice in ice cube trays, which would save some time and clean up each night.

Ingredients for the Juicer:

1. 1 Beet
2. 3 Carrots
3. 1-2 apples
4. 1/4 inch slice of ginger
5. 1/2 cucumber

Ingredients for the Blender:

1. Juice from the Juicer
2. Handful of Kale (shredded it off the stem)
3. Handful of spinach (between the spinach and the kale, I fill the blender)
4. 1 banana
5. 1/2 an avocado
6. 1-2 tablespoons of chia seed or flax seed
7. 1/2 cup of almond
8. 1/2-1 cup of frozen berries (helps cool the smoothie as well)

Directions:

Add the greens to the smoothie first and blend with the juice.  This will allow the greens to be as small as possible, then add the rest of the ingredients and blend in increments as needed.

It’s not the sweetest of smoothies so if your toddler won’t tolerate, add a bit more of the fruits but try to keep the veggies in the majority. If you don’t have all these ingredients (I don’t always), you can play with your ingredients a little.  (For example, in this picture, I didn’t have almond milk to add. Hence the rich purple color.)  Typically the banana adds a lot to a smoothie and is hard to leave out with this much greens and make your toddler still eat it