More Green Goodness

So the past couple of posts have been about food. Part of that is because I love food, and enjoy it immensely. The other part is that I've been trying to enjoy the process of cooking, and for the most part, I think it's been successful.

We've had a rough winter as far as sickness goes, meaning all of us have gotten sick more than once in a month period of time. This does not please me. We've dealt with the flu, colds, ear infections, respiratory infections... all since Christmas!!

Finally, after this bout of RSV, I decided to do my best to curb our chances of getting sick again. I've been introducing more and more fruits and veggies into our diet. Now that the babe is able to eat all table foods, she wants what we're eating. It's amazing how she will "beg" for our food (it's cute, but irritating at the same time). Since we want her to be eating healthy, we've been eating well to encourage her to do the same.

One simple way I've found to increase the intake of fruits is just adding a smoothie everyday. Generally the babe and I (and L sometimes too) consume a smoothie as part of our breakfast. I put some vanilla yogurt, milk, banana (lots of this, b/c it's cheap... especially when you buy the "red taped" ones), blueberries, pear or apples (or both sometimes), mango, strawberries (or whatever we have in the house) in the blender and voila! We love it.

We've even tried the "green smoothies" that are all the rage in health circles. L appreciated this much more than E and I did. I'm going to tweak it again and try it in the future, as it's a great way for us to consume some extra greens. :)

As far as the veggies go, I've started a "soup night" once a week. We all enjoyed the butternut squash soup, and the babe really liked the lentil soup (with carrots and spinach). L and I don't love soup, but it's growing on us, especially since the kiddo loves it! What a great way to sneak in some veggies she wouldn't ordinarily eat!

Another couple of things I've found that helps is to have a stir fry night (L loves this), and adding a salad to as many meals as possible. Nothing ground breaking, but it's just helped us to eat healthier, and hopefully, prevent a little sickness along the way. :)