If you are trying to watch what you eat, and you want to plan an easy breakfast, lunch or snack, making a fruit, veggie or peanut butter smoothie is like a treat! Why buy one through a drive thru where you don’t know exactly what’s in it? If you get your ingredients in order the simple part is blending them together!
Let’s start with an all fruit smoothie! This is a wild card smoothie! Pick your own fruit you love like strawberries, blueberries, “very” ripe bananas, mandarin oranges, apples, pineapple, mango, raspberries, and on and on…
Make sure you have a blender that has a setting for smoothie or crushed ice setting. This way the smoothies with be smooth and icy as can be. Depending on if you freeze your fruit or put it in the blender freshly cut you’ll want to put ice in with it. Now depending on what you prefer, you can add almond milk, juice or low fat milk. Most of the time 8oz. of liquid is what is required depending on how much fruit you add. You may want to add a little protein powder, but sometimes adding a little sugar free pudding powder in will give it a nice texture and wonderful flavor. If you want to spice it a little you can add cinnamon or ginger spice. To sweeten it, honey or maple syrup is an option. Just experiment. You’ll soon get the hang of it and start making your own to your taste.
Now, if you want to make a veggie smoothie you don’t have to have all vegetables as the ingredients. You can add some vegetables to the fruit mix to get the vitamins you desire. Frozen spinach is a popular healthy addition if you put a few chunks in with the fruit blend. Remember is all about healthy and being tasty! There are other veggies to add if you want other benefits like carrots, kale, squash, avocado, and much more! Just look up smoothie recipes to get ideas. Here’s just one of many links: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/g5067/how-to-make-a-smoothie/
Now, the last one we mentioned above is the peanut butter smoothie. The main ingredient is a very ripe banana for sweetness. The riper the sweeter and the better! There are peanut butter powders on the market to buy that have a fraction of the fat and all the protein you are looking for! So, start your smoothie with either 8 oz. of almond milk or low fat milk. Add the banana, and usually 2 scoops of peanut butter powder. Honey is a wonderful addition to this mix. Add ice and that’s it! Blend it to smooth and frothy and you have a yummy treat or healthy protein breakfast or lunch!
Have fun with this! Experiment! Sometimes you may add the wrong ingredients and it will not be that tasty, but that’s okay. Just start again and maybe write your ingredients you choose down so you can recall what you did blend together that was your favorite! Another tip is to make a few batches ahead and freeze them so it’s an easy lunch/breakfast to grab in the morning before work! How convenient and satisfying to know you are making healthy choices for yourself and your family.
