when green smoothies are NOT so good

Yesterday, Andrea from A Peak inside the Fishbowl (AKA @missfish) linked to a post at Fed Up With Lunch about how to help our kids learn healthy eating habits from a young age. One of tips given was to drink green smoothies.

Although I haven't written about them recently (HERE are some old posts), green smoothies continue to be part of our routine and meal plan. Peter, who at first was reluctant to try (to the point of refusing them for the first few weeks of my green smoothie experiment about 18 months ago), is now by far the biggest consumer. He fills up an 18 oz bottle of smoothie to take to work for his morning break (I'd like to say he does this daily, but it (and by "it" I mean my making them) seems to go in spurts... every day solid for a few weeks, then I get lazy or we run out of some ingredient).

Simon and Liam happily drink them or eat them as popsicles (which we'll be doing more and more as the weather warms up), and even Andrew's eyes light up at the sight of his sippy cup full of smoothie.

Andrew, in fact, loves anything green. When it's time to eat, he'll predictably pick out the green things to eat first: peas, asparagus, broccoli, spinach, celery, avocado... If it's green, he'll eat it first.

Take last night for example...

He'd been super fussy while I was getting supper ready, but we figured it was because he was hungry. When it came time to eat, however, all we could coax into him were a few bites of sausage, some avocado, a spear of asparagus, a small stick of celery, a dozen frozen peas, and however much green smoothie he drank from his cup. Sausage excepted, do you see what these things have in common? Green avocado, green asparagus, green celery, green peas... GREEN smoothie? That's right, class, they're all green.

And mixed together, they make for a shockingly green coloured vomit. 

Yes, you read that right.

He continued to fuss after supper, so I laid down with him IN OUR BED to nurse him to sleep, thinking that would help settle him down. I should've known something was amiss when he would hardly nurse, even after eating so little for supper. Thankfully, he made a few telltale gagging noises before the main event and I was able to quickly swing him up and over AND AWAY FROM THE BED just in time. 

(I was also very thankful for easy-clean laminate flooring in our bedroom and not the off white berber we've had in other homes.)

After the tweet from Andrea yesterday, there were quite a few local moms who were talking about green smoothies on twitter last night. I was all set to jump on after the boys were in bed and Peter was snuggly tucked in downstairs watching playoff hockey and tweet about the numerous benefits of green smoothies, when I instead found myself on hands and knees cleaning up green smoothie.

But even that experience isn't enough to deter me from making -and loving- them!