Your other baker friends will be green with envy when they see and taste how fluffy and gorgeous these pancakes turn out! Not only because they are delicious, but because they are packed with spinach! The lovely green hue does little to the taste because the spinach is ground so fine in the Vitamix blender. All you are really getting is the healthy benefits, but the spinach itself is tasteless. Spinach is packed with more than the required daily value of vitamin A, vitamin K, manganese, and folate and plenty of iron, anti-oxidants, and anti-inflammatory phytonutrients. If you are struggling to get your kids to eat healthy spinach as I have been, then you will just LOVE this recipe. Not only is it full of spinach but it is made with whole wheat flour, less than 2 tbsp of sugar, and healthy vitamin D milk and eggs. I have little to protest in this recipe. You could use only 1 tbsp of sugar in the recipe if you plan to use syrup, but because I only topped it with fresh fruits and pureed raspberries, I added an extra dose of sugar.

The green color is very vibrant and fun, and there are a TON of excuses to eat a fun green pancake! Use any of these reasons to get your kids excited about breakfast and a spinach packed pancake (tip: you don’t HAVE to tell them there is spinach): St. Patricks day, those MSU game fans (I’ll take BLUE thanks), Halloween, conjuring Incredible Hulk powers, make a “Very Hungry Caterpillar, or just a green monster kind of morning!

This recipe yields one of the best pancakes I have ever tasted and it is adapted from allrecipes.com; find it here. I substituted the white flour for whole wheat flour and pureed the spinach with the milk to make a nice bright green spinach milk. I was thinking about how we add spinach to all of our smoothies because its flavor is so discrete, so I thought it would be a great addition to pancakes as it would not really alter the recipe. For the topping, simply puree fresh or frozen and thawed raspberries and add sliced bananas. It is the perfect balance of sweet and tart! So here it is! Enjoy!

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This is my all time favorite snack! I became addicted when we lived in Miami and had avocados in abundance, and it was served in many dishes. I use guacamole as an appetizer when entertaining almost every time, as a snack for my kids, and as a snack or salad for myself! Avocados are excellent sources of healthy mono-saturated fats, which are essential for keeping healthy cholesterol levels, improving blood pressure, and preventing heart disease. Avocados are also rich in potassium, vitamin K, vitamin B, vitamin C, and folate. Avocados are also one of the few foods rich in both insoluble and soluble fiber. Insoluble fiber is essential because it helps cleanse your body and will aid in the prevention of colo-rectal cancer as it flushes out and cleanses the colon quite well. Soluble fiber is great for your body because it remains in your body and make you feel fuller longer, preventing a person from eating more unnecessary calories and fats. Avocados have also been shown to significantly increase the body’s absorption of lycopene and beta carotene, so go ahead and add them to your salads and sandwiches!

With all of that said, I could eat this guacamole every day. And its a good thing it is extremely easy to make! Please, don’t bother buying it from a store! Please! A fresh avocado tastes SO much better and you will be so happy to see how easy it is to prepare. Sometimes I make it with only tomato and lime if I am missing the other ingredients and it still tastes just as wonderful! My general flavoring ratio is 1 lime and 1/2 tomato  per avocado, and optionally, 1 tbsp of chopped onion per avocado. Any more onion or tomato and it will be too liquified and saucy, which still tastes great as a salsa or dip, but will lack that nice, thick, and creamy texture of guacamole. The cilantro just gives it that perfect kick and flavor, so I always make sure to add it if I have it! I usually omit or limit the jalapeño if I have the kids eating with me, because that can get quite spicy for them!
To pick an avocado, touch and press it gently, if it yields to your touch and is still firm, it is probably not ripe yet. And on the contrary if it is quite soft, has indentations, or is smushy it will be overly ripe or spoiled! You want it to be soft enough to give way a little bit under your fingers but still have firmness. You could also pull off the stump of the stem and check for a nice yellowish green color. Check out this useful post I pinned on Pinterest to help me pick avocados.

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We really enjoyed pretending to be at a beach laying out and sipping our Tropical Paradise smoothies we went for it again. I got some lovely fragrant passion fruits from Whole Foods (they are ripe when starting to wrinkle) and juicy starfruit.  Passionfruit is a very nutrient rich tropical fruit. It is high in vitamin A (carotenoids), antioxidants, iron, fiber and protein. The flesh, seeds, and pulp of the passionfruit provides about 5 grams of protein and 24 grams of fiber! So I just scooped the entire fruit out of its skin and into the blender; no need to strain the juice as others may suggest. Star fruit is also very high in fiber, potassium, and vitamin C. If you can find an organic one, its great to just toss it in with its waxy peel which has many nutrients within it. Star fruit is believed to improve the flow of milk in nursing mothers and to suppress cough. In this concoction, I also add vitamin C packed oranges and use a ripe banana as the sweetener and a potassium and fiber boost.

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