Mini Roasted Mulberry Smoothie Bowls
I CAN'T STOP ROASTING BERRIES. I'm sorry, I promise I won't always be so repetitive. But try it, they pop under the broiler and get all juicy and sweeter and great. Unless you burn them. (I am so predictable).
I am officially in the yogurt making biz. As you may know I'm pretty much an exclusively Aldi girl. I go with their organic whole milk yogurt but I reaaaally like full fat or 2% GREEK yogurt (not currently an Aldi option) so I make it. Greek yog is just regular 'gurt that has had a bit more of the whey removed (I apologize for that abbreviation and promise to never use it again). Whey is where the calcium hangs out so typically Greek yogurt is lower in Calcium and sometimes actually has to be fortified. BUT the whey removal process makes it higher in protein. #BALANCE. I like Greek a little better because it's sooo thick and makes more of a smoothie bowl vs. smoothie smoothie. Oh, and I don't mess around with light yogurt... 0% fat?! You can keep that shiz.
Mulberries are super similar to blackberries except they're FREE thanks to all of the trees in our yard. Our fingers have been stained for the last few days because Ruthie bolts straight outside in the morning and starts picking them out of the grass. So now we're trying to teach Ruthie not to eat random plants. Life is WEIRD. Another weird planty thing, the strangest yellow goopy fungus keeps popping up in our mulch and Ruthie loves to run over to it and exclaim "I WILL POKE IT WITH A STICK". And then she pokes it with a stick. We had mushrooms with dinner last night and this smart-as-hell little angel face shouted "I'M EATING FUNGUS" and I was so proud until I realized she will now want to eat the mulch fungus. LIFE IS SO SO WEIRD.
Ok I will probably write about this a lot in the future, but I am a BIG fan of feeding Ruthie the same things we are eating. I've always used spices and herbs in her foods. The only things I adjust are heat (jalapeños, cayenne, etc) and salt. I don't add salt to recipes and use fresh or frozen veg and dried beans to cut down on any salt that might be added to their canned counterparts. Austin and I usually add salt to ours after cooking (+ sriracha on almost everything).
I don't love the idea of exclusively "hiding" foods to dupe todds into eating vegetables. I'm definitely all about sticking veggies where they don't belong (CHEESE SAUCE), but they also need to be served in a recognizable fashion fairly regularly for a babe to get used to them (and maybe even LIKE THEM!?). "Look bud, these are vegetables and they are going to be a part of your life forever so get to know them" is my philosophy. But I do like the idea of sometimes cramming a bunch of vegetables into a small little serving of "juice" AKA smoothies. Smoothie bowls + toppings turned out to be a lot of fun for Ruthie. It was insanely messy but so is our life (seriously, I found like 15 spaghetti noodles stuck under our kitchen table the other day). Have fun!
Ingredients:
Makes 4 small smoothie bowls or 2 normal sized bowls.
1 1/2 cups plain Greek yogurt
2 cups fresh or roasted blackberries/mulberries/raspberries
1-2 frozen bananas
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1-2 cups spinach
toppings: small chopped walnuts, melted peanut butter, chia seeds, sunflower seeds, dried flaked coconut, sliced bananas, mini chocolate chips, and maybe a cheerio or two.
Directions:
Add all ingredients (except for toppings) to the blender and blend until smooth and creamy. I put out several small bowls of toppings and let me tell you we made a MESSSS but we had fun and ate a lot of good for you stuff in the process.
