Our favourite doc is on her honey moon 🙂   I am doing a few guest posts and I hope you enjoy them.  My name is Vivienne and I am passionate about food and nutrition.   I have experienced the healing power of food myself and I have seen how important it is for my girls, having come from a deprivation of adequate nutrition early in life…  We have two teen girls.  Like so many, one of our girls doesn’t like greens.  Never has, probably never will.  Now if you say “Bacon”, that is another thing.  She will come running down the stairs… “That smells soooooo good, mum”.

I knew I was in trouble when, on the day we adopted her at 4 years of age, I bought her a bowl of fried rice for dinner.  Of course after all the reading I had done about keeping things as familiar as possible, and as ‘safe’ for her as possible, I went for that as I figured that was the sort of food she liked.   Well, it came and we are eating dinner.  I spy her picking out the little bits of green spring onions, looking at me to see if I was looking and when she thought I wasn’t….. she flicked them onto the floor 🙂  My mother was with me and I signalled to her and we silently giggled.   I knew then I was up for a battle to get greens into her.

Anyhow, the joke was on me, trying to get her comfort food, as the next day when we visited the orpanage director, she told us very proudly that Chun loved, loved Maccas.  Yup, the golden arches, Micky Dee’s…. and everything else we call it…    They had trained her to like “Western food”.    Idk ick ick….

I was still full of optimism and enthusiasm and thought that after a few months with me….  well you know what I was thinking.  Strong willed mum, takes no rubbish,  can wait out a child’s stubbornness, yada yada yada.  Well,  we have done the ‘eat one green pea’ thing, and the if you eat this bit of cabbage you can have some chocolate for dessert and ALSO the ‘you can’t leave the table until you finish your dinner’ thing…. nope.  Not working.   That was when she was FOUR.  She is now 15!    So, now we have an uneasy truce.  We work around.  I use plenty of the veg she will have… tomato, cucumber, cos (only cos) lettuce capsicum, carrots, pumpkin, cauliflower and broccoli.  AND  I hide leafy greens in smoothies for breakfast 🙂

Now, my trick for smoothies is to use light coloured greens such as lettuce.  It makes the green less visible.  Then use either highly coloured fruits or strongly flavoured fruits.  Red dragon fruit, if you are in the tropics, is a really good colouring agent as it is so so intense…  I find it even better than beetroot.   For flavouring, a mango and/or passionfruit are amazing.

Our favourite breakfast now (and it even gets thumbs up from my lovely niece who is visiting) is… wait….

One red dragon fruit, 2 passionfruit, a small piece of ginger, one banana, 150 ml of coconut milk (this makes it nice and creamy, and I think this is what disguises some of the ‘green’ taste)  and two baby cos lettuce…..    blend in your favourite blender (I use a Thermomix) for abut 10 seconds.  Then add a cup of ice cubes and blend for a further 20 to 30 seconds.   The smoothest, creamiest smoothie… dairy free, refined sugar free….AND with greens. Serve in your favourite glass with a swirl of the coconut milk on top….  a mum’s dream    :-

My other go to smoothie at the moment is one mango, one banana, 2 small cos lettuce, one white dragon fruit and 150 ml of coconut milk….    again, so creamy.  it is highly green in colour, but the mango flavour comes through and the creaminess of the coconut milk lightens the “greenness”.

(You can also join me at my blog at https://nograinlife.wordpress.com !!!  I’d love to see you. )

Enjoy !