Phoebe recently turned 4, which we celebrated at the park with friends, family, and a particularly talented face painter. I made two cakes, both decorated with little critters made out of meringue in four different pastel shades. I spent most of the evening before the party painstakingly attaching candy eyes to each critter which, I admit, I greatly enjoyed—it was sort of meditative. One cake was ginger and salted caramel, one was lemon; both were very delicious, but understandably all anyone wanted to talk about were the critters. Thank you, Kim-Joy, for the recipe for those (check out her book, Bake Joy, if you want to make some very adorable bakes)!
Spring is finally here, warmth creeping into afternoons and flowers popping up in every available space. Wren is obsessed with flowers; he calls them “abbos,” and Phoebe gets a kick out of picking large bouquets of sour grass for him, his tiny fingers opening infinitesimally to accept any extras she tries to hand him. The stalks of sour grass inevitably appear all over the ground, on the floor of the house, all over the car, shredded into tiny bits and wilted, but his excitement is worth the clean up every time.
If you have children I think most of you will relate to me on this: my 4-year old thinks all green vegetables are the most disgusting thing in the world. Aside from the token green sheets of Nori she incongruously consumes, I’ve had to resort to trickery, hyping up my “magic green” smoothies. Spinach has very little actual flavor but a lot of nutritional value; adding it raw to a fruit smoothie to turn it a friendly light green color has so far resulted in zero complaints from my kids. It’s delicious and lightly tropical from the mango; each time we drink it I give myself a mental high five for exposing myself and my kids to more green vegetables. This recipe is barely a recipe—just throw it all in the blender, whiz it up, and divide between glasses or reusable baby pouches.
Note that if you have a ton of spinach and it’s on its way to becoming compost, you can blitz all of it in a blender with as little water as you need to get it finely puréed, then spoon it into ice cube trays and freeze. I keep my frozen spinach cubes in a bag in the freezer, using one or two cubes per smoothie as needed instead of fresh spinach.
Pro tip: freeze this smoothie (or any, really) in small popsicle molds for kids; they go crazy for them!
A Green Smoothie For Everyone
Serves 2-3
1 banana, fresh or frozen
1 cup frozen mango chunks
1 packed cup / 2 handfuls fresh spinach
⅓ cup yogurt of your choosing (I use whole-milk plain)
½ – 1 scoop protein powder, vanilla or unflavored (optional)
a spoonful of honey, to taste (I use roughly 3 tsp)
1 cup liquid of your choice (I use ½ cup milk and ½ cup water)
Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until completely smooth, which may take a couple of minutes. Simple as that. Enjoy!
first to the table 