Desperation Breeds Ingenuity

I ran out of milk and tofu and yogurt.  The past few days have been terribly busy, and not only have we been missing trips to the store, but we have been missing out on nutritious foods.

So tonight I decided to redeem some of the day with a green smoothie before bed.  But alas, my fridge didn't hold the ingredients I needed... or did it?

Here is a recipe for a smoothie that went over REALLY well with my son tonight.  I do admit I added some chocolate syrup to entice him, but I do not think it was necessary.

Desperate Measures Smoothie

1 C. enriched vanilla Rice Dream
1 C. low fat cottage cheese (that's right! Cottage Cheese!)
1/2 C. filtered water
1 cube of frozen homemade strawberry juice (I think you could just use apple juice here if you want)
1/2 C. frozen blueberries
1 c. frozen pureed swiss chard
1 frozen banana
1 Tbsp. low fat chocolate syrup (I bet you could replace this with some cocoa and agave, or just agave and leave out the chocolate all together).

Here is an approximate nutritional breakdown using apple juice since it is hard to estimate the values on homemade strawberry juice.  Just click on them to enlarge them if you are interested and they'll be magnified for your viewing pleasure.  This smoothie created three servings and each serving has approximately 218 calories.

It was so tasty that my picky-as-HELL two year old called it "YUMMY!", and then proceeded to pilfer mine when he was done with his.

Here is some nutritional info on low-fat cottage cheese:

And, here is a link to some more of the nutritional benefits of this smoothie's key ingredients:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/13/2

Life is good.