Face it, we're not kids anymore. The time for folding our Brussels sprouts in napkins and hiding them under the dinner table is over. If we want to live healthy lives, we need to eat a balanced diet that includes fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, my palate for vegetables has not matured. I still don't like them for the most part. Guess I'm still a kid at heart. I don't typically eat things if I do not like how they taste. I have however found a delightful little remedy for this situation.

Let's take spinach, for example. Unless it is laden with unhealthy salt, I find that a cup of cooked spinach on my plate can taste bitter and very unappealing. What I learned is that raw spinach leaves, perhaps sprinkled in a salad are much more tasty than cooked ones. Let's take them a step further and make them even more tasty!

Most of us like milkshakes, smoothies, fruit drinks. Why not incorporate your healthy spinach into one? There are many readymade vegetable drinks in the supermarkets but they might contain not so healthy added sugar, salt or sugar substitutes.

With just a little time on your hands, less time than it will take you to make a quick run to the market, you can prepare a delicious spinach smoothie. Here are the ingredients you will need on hand, or run to the market after all, pick them up, come back home and then you're ready:

1 cup of fresh raw spinach leaves

2 oranges, peeled and sliced

1 green apple, sliced not peeled

6oz cold water

4 icecubes

A blender

Place all ingredients in blender and blend on high speed until smooth.

That is really all you need to make a drink that tastes so good, you wouldn't mind starting your day with it each morning. Rich in iron, the spinach will give you a natural energy boost. This is quite a big serving of fruits/vegetables, so you might not be as concerned when you don't have cooked veggies with your pasta at dinnertime.

I was inspired to start making this drink by a couple of different recipes I saw but I have significantly limited ingredients both because of cost and because of sugar content.

Some such vegetable drink recipes suggest adding bananas, grapes, various melons, pineapple and/or strawberries in addition and/or even worse, refined sugar. If you add both a handful of grapes and several pineapple chunks, you are adding quite a lot of sugar that is not necessary however natural (fructose) it may be.

You can limit sugar intake by keeping things simple. You can save those extra fruits for another day and another type of smoothie such as a banana smoothie or a strawberry smoothie.

The way I prepare this drink, it is not very sweet but it still tastes like a treat. Just a little tart, not at all bitter. I hope you try making it. Enjoy and be healthy!