Thank you to Iceland for working with me on this post.
Smoothie making is a great way of getting fruit and vegetables into kids, at least it is if your children will actually drink them! Mine have never liked them and despite me offering them tastes of mine all the time they refuse to even take a mouthful. Lately though I’ve found that by getting them involves in the making process they are more likely to try, and like, things. In fact making pizza bases from scratch a couple of weeks ago resulted in Tiger eating an entire pizza and asking to make them all the time, something which was a huge deal for him as he would only eat pasta with pesto for about two years.
This week I decided to lay out all the ingredients for smoothies and let them choose what to put in. It’s like going back to basics and works on the same principle as baby led weaning, the idea of them getting used to foods and textures before trying them. Looking back now there was a lot more I could have done when they were babies to help them discover lots of different tastes but better late than never. We actually saw a nutritionist about some issues Tiger has and she suggested that we let him play with food, just to take away all the stress and fear that can come with eating so although it’s quite hard to watch food be played with, and I guess ‘wasted’ in a way, there is a great benefit in doing so.
I actually found all of these ingredients in Iceland, they contacted me recently about working together on a post and I knew straight away I wanted to make smoothies as I had been wanting to try the vegan ice-cream they’ve recently started selling. I have to admit Iceland wasn’t somewhere I expected to sell vegan ice-cream but it’s only 99p a tub and tastes amazing. It’s sweetened with dates so doesn’t have sugar in it either and as you will see in the photos below the kids put most of it straight into their mouths instead of the smoothie maker.
It was the first time I’ve looked around an Iceland store properly, I had been in one once before to pick up some bread on the way home but I walked up and down all the aisles this time and was surprised to find a good range of healthier products. I always used to watch the adverts and assume all they sold was frozen meat, I can still remember there being one about a frozen prawn platter! I didn’t used to buy food like that before becoming vegan so obviously I wouldn’t now but for things like frozen vegetables and fruit they are great. They also sell superfood bags like this zesty bean quinoa which sounds really good and the piri piri sweet potato burgers. They sell a large range of fresh fruit too so it’s not actually all frozen, something which I didn’t realise!
Iceland wouldn’t ever be somewhere I could do all my shopping but it’s great to see them starting to sell vegan products and I will definitely be popping in to stock up on frozen fruit and veg as well as the Nana ice-cream. If you haven’t ever been in one then it’s worth popping in, you might be surprised! You can also shop online here.
So did the kids drink their smoothies?! Tiger looks very unsure in this photo but he did try it which is a really big step for him. He didn’t actually like but that’s fair enough, the main thing is he enjoyed making it and took a mouthful!
Cherry liked hers though.
