Green with Envy

Remember when I told you that I jumped on the Green Monster bandwagon? And, no, I'm sorry to all of you baseball fans, but I wasn't talking about the Boston Red Sox's mascot. Well, as it turns out, there's another fan of the 'green smoothie' in my household.

This guy:

Yes, that's my six year old son, Aidan, in all of his "hamming it up for the camera" glory. He actually refused dinner one night last week unless he had a 'monster shake' to drink. OK, so I know it's not right {as a parent} to let your children basically walk all over you & call the shots, but - HELLO - this was a six year old boy asking for a smoothie that is made from S-P-I-N-A-C-H! I immediately made him a green monster smoothie & he happily ate his dinner {which, coincidentally, also had spinach in it}.

Want to know what we had for dinner that night?

This:

Rachael Ray's Spinach & Hot Ham Fake-Baked Pasta...the recipe can be found here. It's easy to fix, requires a few ingredients from the store {because, if you're like me, you don't have a well-stocked pantry} and is delicious! This casserole feeds my family of four for two nights...can't go wrong with that, right?

I joined the movement...

The green monster movement, that is!

Read more about it here.

Have you tried one of these smoothies?
If so, what is your favorite recipe/blend?

For this morning's smoothie {I plan on having these for breakfast during the work week} I stuck with the Virgin Green Monster, but I did add a spoonful of peanut butter. It was - surprisingly - delicious and tasted nothing like spinach...the banana-peanut butter flavor totally came through! Tomorrow, I'm going to try a banana-papaya blend {because I gotta use that bag of Trader Joe's frozen papaya somehow!}. Oh, I did add some flax to it, but I think that maybe I should have just bought some flax seed and not the milled kind from the baking aisle.

We'll see how this all goes...I need to eat healthier & any way that I can get more fiber, veggies and overall goodness into my diet is KEY!

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Oh, and on a side note {because I feel I deserve to brag just a wee bit}, I haven't had a soda in nearly two weeks. This is a MAJOR feat for me because I am, er, WAS, a Coke-aholic! Don't get me wrong, I'm still getting my fair share of caffeine {baby steps, baby steps!}, but at least it's not by way of sugar-laden, gut poppin' soda!