Rachel De Thample
Rachel has worked as a chef, author, and Head of Food at Abel & Cole. She set up the award-winning Crystal Palace Food Market and Edible Garden, and teaches courses at River Cottage in Devon.
Rachel’s Alligator Pear Shake
Rachel De Thample
Effort:
Complexity:
Cost:
In season now
Serves: 2
Prep time: 1 min
Ingredients:
100g baby leaf spinach
1 avocado
2 pears
A squeeze of lemon or lime juice
Veg Portions / Serving: 1
Recipe donated by Rachel de Thample for Veg Power. Food photography by Claire Wright | addsomeveg.com
Avocados are brilliant in smoothies – they need to be nice and ripe, but once they are they’re like the veg-equivalent of adding ice cream to a smoothie as they’re so rich and creamy.
Method:
Simply blend all the ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth. Drink straight away or freeze as ice lollies.
Engaging Kids
Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.
Kids in the kitchen
Get the kids to make this one themselves. They can dump everything in the blender and push the button!
Activities
While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.
Sensory
Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.
Serving
The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.
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