Eat Your Greens!

I just love that I trust my children with their food choices. It is a pleasure to watch M explore and love some foods, find he doesn't like others and revisit after a while, only to find that he does feel like them today. It is quite beautiful to watch the stages he goes through and how his body intuitively picks a balanced diet, I love that he really tunes in and listens and I am thankful that we have so much to offer him!

Through his continuing exploration, he discovered that he didn't like greens so much anymore. At first, yes I was a little, hmmmm, perplexed, how could i get this great food into his spectrum of choices with fun and make it tasty?

When he was 2ish I purchased some Kale Chips to taste them and see if I could copy the flavour at home with my own dehydrator. Moss loved them from the very first time he tasted them, and it was wonderful to see him really enjoying this delicious food and it was a green food too!

This morning mossy asked me for Kale Chips, I love that it is something that he loves to eat, I love that it is something we can prepare together. One day he said "Mum, is this salad?" I said it was a green food that I love to put in salads, he seemed to think that even though it was a salad, it could also be fun to eat!

My Kale Chips are always different variations, today i added zucchini to my recipe.....

My basic recipe that I pretty much always do is :

2 bunches of kale, the leaves torn from the stalks

1 cup cashews (any creamy nut would be fine)

1 capsicum

1 tomato

splash of olive oil

pinch salt

pinch of paprika

juice of a lemon

2 T Goji berries

I blend up the ingredients aside from the kale, and pour it over the kale, mix through , coating everything generously and then i devide the mixture into three dehydrator sheets and pop them in the D overnight (or all day) at around 40 degrees c.

They end up tasting quite cheesy and paprika I love!

Kale Chips are easy and quick and we love munching them so much.

Other ways I put greens into foods or smoothies is introduce Moss to green powders, he has a taste and usually loves it, so i ask him if he would like it in a raw choc smoothy, which i make with almond milk, dried figs, bananas, avocado, honey, cacao, pink salt and a heaping spoon of green powder. So much yummy nutrition in a glass and all tasting sooo velvety chocolaty.

Love it! I truely believe that there never has to be power struggles over food, we can find ways to help our kids enjoy the wonderful experience that is food, by trusting them completely, listening to them, helping them get involved if they choose, and giving up the need to be right. Of course if you have allergies in your family and must have restrictions on things, I have found the raw recipe movement quite cool , because often you can make delicious recipies without things that you can't have in your home right now.

Get creative! have fun with it. There is such a huge world of flavour out there! enjoy!