I have six teenagers in my life and I can’t feed them. The kitchen is always open and I don’t know why there’s a door on the fridge as it’s never closed. They are all still growing and as long as they continue to stretch they have the luxury of being able to eat what they like. Yes, I try to have healthy snacks in stock but there are always sweet quick things on hand to keep the hanger under control too. We’ve stockpiles of various types of nuts to munch on, rice cakes, jars of peanut butter, fresh-fruit, crackers and cheese. We cannot run out of pasta and pesto. Tinned tuna and sardines are handy too.
With a gargantuan visa bill managing to work its way through the letter box in September and another on the way for October I’ve taken to shopping around and filling my freezer. Frozen vegetables are a revelation to me – I’ve only ever used frozen peas and sweetcorn but recently saw a video online of a quick dinner whipped up by Jamie Oliver using frozen spinach. I’ve never used it but it’s in my freezer now. I took to facebook to ask what it was and my cousin’s wife told me about these frozen fruit and vegetable smoothie bases in Aldi, one of which uses frozen kale. Wow! Thank you Aoife. These are going down a bomb in my house with the starving teens.
We’ve gone through a number of smoothie makers/blenders over the years but on the recommendation of Jessica Kelly of Newstalk I got hold of a – Kenwood ‘2Go’ Sport – smoothie maker and so far so good. The kids find it easy to use and its been put through its paces with these smoothies. They’ve been making them with a fist full of the frozen fruit/veg and combining with apple juice.
Simple and quick and as I say as long as the kids are growing upwards I’m not bothered by sugar content.
‘Til next time, Sheila.
