Unless you're new to this blog, you know that I love making holiday themed foods for my kids. So for St. Patrick's Day we love green foods! But since I also try to make pretty healthy recipes most of the time, we turn everything green naturally! 

Today I have a healthy remake of the Shamrock Shake without any vanilla ice cream or food coloring. And while my kids would probably enjoy the ice cream version, they love this one enough that I've never made them the sugar-loaded one.

I have two versions of the recipe for you today, a regular smoothie and a thicker version for smoothie bowls. Try them both ways, either way it'll be delicious!

Makes 2 small and 1 large glass of smoothie

In the pitcher of a high powered blender combine 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk, 1 frozen banana, 1/2 cup frozen mango, 2 cups baby spinach, and 10 fresh mint leaves*. Pour into glasses and top with whipped cream and gold sprinkles if you want to be a little extra festive!

*Since there are always way more than 10 mint leaves in the bunch you buy from the store, I freeze the extra. Simply give 10 leaves a rough chop before tossing them into the cup in an ice cube tray then fill with water. Repeat with however many mint leaves you have. Once they're frozen, I keep the cubes in a bag in the freezer and if I want to make the Shamrock Smoothie I can just throw one cube into the blender with everything else!

In the bowl of a food processor combine 1/2-2/3 cup vanilla Greek yogurt (I use Oikos triple zero), 1/4 cup water, 1 frozen banana, 1 cup frozen mango, 2 cups baby spinach, and 10 fresh mint leaves. Blend until smooth.

We topped ours with chia seeds, chopped cashews, gold coin sprinkles, and mini chocolate chips.

Note: If your kids - or you - want it extra smooth without any tiny bits of spinach, blend the liquid and spinach by themselves before adding everything else. That will help it have a more uniform look.

For another delicious green recipe, check out Naturally Green Spinach Crepes.

In honor of International Day of Women and Girls in Science this year, we got a big stack of picture books about female scientists from the library. Out 14 amazing women, I had only heard of 2 of them! One of the new scientists I was introduced to was Dr. Meg Lowman. Her story is amazing! She was the first person to actually climb up into the rainforest canopy to study wildlife and helped create canopy walkways so more people could study and experience the wonder of the canopy!

We picked up a bunch of books about amazing female scientists from the library last month and have been slowly reading through them and doing extension activities. This is the first of many I will be sharing!