Sometimes when I make a smoothie, there are leftovers. This is easy to handle – I haul out my popsicle molds and pour it in. Soon enough I have popsicles so healthy that I don’t mind letting my kids eat them for breakfast!
And yes, the kids find it hilarious that they can have popsicles for breakfast.
I love making smoothies. I do these year round. Really can’t say I have a recipe as such, as it’s pretty much toss whatever looks good into the blender (my beloved Vitamix, of course!), and mix it all up.
We buy big bags of frozen fruit and berries regularly, so there’s no ice in any of my smoothie recipes. I do have some ingredients I use regularly, and that’s what I’ll list here. I don’t use all of these at once; it’s more of a mix and match thing.
Mixed frozen fruits
Mixed frozen berries
Banana
Carrot
Fresh spinach (NOT frozen, taste is wrong)
Fresh kale
Soaked chia seeds
Bee pollen
Fruit juice
Lemon juice
Honey
Cacao nibs (may need sweetener & yogurt to cut bitterness)
Yogurt
Oatmeal (cooked & cooled may be less grainy)
Cocoa mix
Place selected ingredients in your blender. Add enough fruit juice or other liquid to help it blend and keep it from getting too thick to drink. Taste before serving to make sure you have a good flavor, and have fun experimenting.
I loved pudding pops as a kids. Chocolate, of course. While these are probably the least healthy suggestion I’ll give during this entire 30 days, they’re also a lot of fun and you can make them healthier with some additions.
1 3.9 oz (small) package pudding mix
2 cups milk
1/2 cup frozen whipped topping
Make pudding according to package directions. Allow mix to cool if using a cooked pudding. Mix in whipped topping. Pour into popsicle molds.
You can add fresh fruit to make this healthier. Real whipped cream rather than whipped topping is another option. You can also be more ambitious than I am and make your own pudding. This will let you have more control over all of the ingredients. There’s a good recipe at Rodale for chocolate pudding. I haven’t tried it, but I imagine you could use avocado chocolate mousse rather than chocolate pudding to make these healthier.
You can also have fun and use more than one flavor of pudding. There are some really fun ideas at Our Best Bites.
Most of my smoothies are at least a little green. Spinach is so easy to add, and doesn’t change the flavor all that much. Kale works well too.
But if you want something that will definitely work as a green smoothie, with a nice green shade, there are some things you should do. Skip the berries, for example. I love berries in my smoothies, but you’ll get a more muddy color if you mix the red of the berries with the green of the spinach. It’s not that appealing to kids, while green can be a fun color. Don’t add chocolate or cacao nibs either, as once again, it will have more of a brown color. Stick with ingredients that will allow the green to show. Now if your kids don’t mind a brownish tint, go for the berries and/or chocolate. We’re going for delicious, after all, along with healthy.
1-2 handfuls spinach
1-4 celery sticks
1 banana, peeled
1 apple, sliced
1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 cup ice
Place all ingredients in blender. Puree until smooth. Add milk, juice or water if smoothie is too thick. Serve.
Lemonade popsicles are very simple to make. You freeze lemonade in the molds. Slice up some other fruits, add them to the mold first, and you have a much more interesting snack.
The one thing you need to consider is the space your popsicle stick will require. Make sure you can get it far enough into the mold even with the fruit there.
Use a good lemonade to keep it healthy. It’s easy to make on your own if you have some lemons around.
