Recently, we received an email from a reader looking for beverage recipes that he and his kids (ages 7, 9 and 14) could make together. John Sarrouf, the Director of The Family Dinner Project, offers a few ideas:
This is a great question. Smoothies and drink recipes are a fun way to get everyone involved in the kitchen, and don’t take too much cleaning up afterwards! Here are a few of my favorites.
Healthy Smoothies
- Base: Choose either yogurt, milk, or juice as your base. Throw a splash in the blender, and then add more while blending to get your desired thickness.
- Fruit: Add any combination of frozen berries, peaches, pineapples, banana, or mango.
- Veggies: You can add greens like kale, spinach, or Swiss chard.
- Sweetener: You don’t usually need to add a sweetener, because certain fruits like banana and pineapple are sweet all by themselves. If you do need to add a sweetener, I add agave because it blends best.
- Extra boost: For a more complete meal, you can add protein powder (although I think it makes it a bit thick).
Hit the “blend” button for a few minutes, and you’re good to go!
Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie
- Base: 1.5 cups of milk
- Fruit: 1 banana
- Thickener: 2 tablespoons all natural peanut butter
- Sweetener: 1 table spoon chocolate powder
Toss all the ingredients in and blend for a few minutes. This is definitely a favorite in my family.
Raspberry Limeade
- 3 cups of water
- 4 limes
- 1/2 cup raspberries
- Some sugar or agave
This is another blender recipe. Squeeze the limes, then pour the juice into the blender. Add frozen or fresh raspberries, and as much sugar as you need (but not too much!). Add water and blend.
Sun Tea with Fresh Mint
- In the morning, put 4 tea bags in a glass bottle and it fill with water. You can use any kind of tea, but ginger tea or rooibos will make it nice and sweet.
- Add 4-5 sliced mint leaves.
- Add a dash of lemonade as a sweetener (optional).
- Set it outside in a sunny spot, and come back 8 hours later, in the afternoon. Voila! Sun tea!
Chop Chop Magazine also has a whole section on drinks for kids. Check them out for even more ideas!
On the topic of making beverages with kids, Dr. Anne Fishel also offers this amusing story of making limeade with her sons:
Mystery Rash
One day, when my kids were young, my son Joe decided he really wanted to make a big pitcher of limeade. So, we went to the store and bought about a dozen limes. Even though he’s the younger brother, he usually took charge of projects like this, and he told his older brother, Gabe, to squeeze all the limes, which he did.
Several days later, we noticed that Gabe had a weird rash on each hand, between the thumb and first finger. I took him to the pediatrician, and several doctors were called in to look at the rash and were stumped. Then a nurse came in and said, “Either you’re pregnant or you’ve gotten a lot of lime juice on your hands, and then they were out in the sun.”
Since Gabe was an 11-year-old boy, we knew it was the latter!
Moral of the story? Wash your hands after making limeade!
Image above from The Healthy Haven.