Sneaky Smoothies

It is hard to get toddlers to eat vegetables. Well, not peas, usually, but the really good-for-you vegetables I have a hard time with. They like carrots, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, cucumbers, zucchini, and corn, but they turn their noses up at broccoli and dark, leafy greens. So I sneak those veggies in fruit smoothies and they gobble them up every afternoon, never knowing.

Here's today's smoothie:

1 whole red pear (cored)
1 mandarin orange, peeled
1 large chunk fresh pineapple
1 handful (my handful) red grapes
1 handful muscadines (frozen from the summer)
5-6 strawberries
1 large chunk cucumber
1 large handful broccoli florets and stems
1 stick celery
unfiltered, pressed apple juice
ice

the girls drank about 8 ounces of this, and I had the rest. It's how I make sure I'm getting all of my veggies, too. We make a smoothie almost every afternoon. I'm itching to get up to Whole Foods where I can buy a head of chard and kale. We need some vitamin K, iron, and potassium!