I can’t tell you how excited I am about the fact that our local market has recently started stocking berries that a) don’t cost an arm and a leg and b) actually taste good again… I look forward to this time every year! Of course, a fridge filled with all kinds of colourful fruit means delicious fruit parfaits, and with St. Patrick’s Day quickly approaching it means rainbow fruit parfaits {with clouds on top just for fun!}
First off, did you know that it’s actually St. Paddy’s and not St. Patty’s?! I usually pride myself on using fairly decent spelling and grammar, but I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea. In fact, I used St. Patty’s this morning… Gah. It wasn’t until I read this shared by the lovely Erin at Large that I found out the truth. Oops.
Anyways, enough with that. Here’s a little peek at our Sunday/St. Patricks Day…
A green breakfast {a lime refresher smoothie, veggie pancakes, kiwi slices, and avocado chunks}.
Girl in green.
A frozen treat.
Post-nap shamrock stamping.
Green pasta and cheese.
♥
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Ever since our recent Shopping Sense tour, Gracen’s been talking about “eating a rainbow”. I really had no idea she was even paying attention to the registered dietician during the event, but since she’d never mentioned eating a rainbow until dinnertime after the tour, I’m guessing she was. It’s amazing to see what little sponges they are, isn’t it? Now she says things like, “Look, Papa… There’s orangey, purple, and green! Grae Grae’s eating a rainbow for dinner!”
This afternoon when she requested a snack “including all the colours of the rainbow”, I decided to do something fun.
Fruit lends itself to creating a rainbow so well that I could have easily made the entire thing just from one food group, but I decided to try and include at least a little bit of protein, dairy, and veg too. I ended up with strawberry chunks, all-natural sharp cheddar cubes, low-sodium chickpeas, edamame beans, fresh blueberries, and banana coins for the clouds (sorry indigo and violet – skipped you this time!)
The chickpeas were scooped up by my hungry little monkey before I had a chance to assemble the rainbow, so they were replaced with chunks of yellow pepper (just as well – she loves those too). Using a small plate and following its arc made shaping the rainbow really easy.
And you should have seen the eyes on my little rainbow loving girl when I set the plate down in front of her… She loved it so much that we had a great brainstorming session about all of the foods that could be used to create a rainbow snack (and she of course had way more ideas than I did).
Here are some of the options we came up with…
Red: strawberries . raspberries . red peppers . grape tomatoes . cherries . kidney beans .
Orange: cheddar . oranges . carrots . orange peppers . homemade cheese crackers . cantaloupe . apricots .
Yellow: yellow peppers . chickpeas . pineapple . mango . swiss cheese . yellow tomatoes .
Green: edamame beans . green peppers . cucumbers . pickles . broccoli . snap peas . avocado . kiwi . green grapes .
Blue / Purple: blueberries . blackberries . beets . red grapes . purple peppers . plums .
White: bananas . mozzarella cheese . tofu cubes . cottage cheese . plain yogurt . white kidney beans . hardboiled eggs
You never know… We just may have to repeat this idea on St. Patrick’s Day (or use it for a rainbow party one day!)
♥
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I can’t tell you how happy I am that Gracen is a good eater. As a mama, providing her with proper nutrition is at the tippy top of my list of goals, right next to making sure she gets proper sleep. Of course I’d like to attribute her good eating habits to the way we introduced her to food initially (and the way we continue to deal with her eating in general), but it could very well just be that we are lucky. Or perhaps it’s a little bit of both. Either way, if she was a picky little thing, as many munchkins are, you’d better bet I’d use St. Patrick’s Day to trick her into eating as many green things as possible in one single day of the year. It would most likely involve some crazy story involving pesky leprechauns and lucky green super foods, but for now, let’s just be thankful I don’t have to go there. Today Gracen and I ate green foods at each meal, and she was more than happy to do so!
Breakfast // Green pepper enclosed organic egg. Green fruit salad. Toasted multigrain farmer’s bread drizzled with olive oil.
Lunch // Veggie and black bean quesadillas (low-sodium spinach tortilla, roasted zucchini, avocado, green onion, no salt added black beans, and jalapeño havarti). Avocado sour cream for dipping.
Snack // Spinach and green fruit smoothie.
Dinner // Pesto chicken breast. Spinach linguine with avocado, fresh spinach, and toasted pine nuts. Roasted spicy green beans.
Dessert // Grape skewers.