Smoothie Prep

In the past few months Patrick and I have really gotten into enjoying fruit smoothies. We keep all the ingredients on hand for those mornings when we need a quick breakfast. Recently we've started portioning the ingredients into small containers that we freeze and when we're ready to make the smoothie we can just add milk!

When we were registering for our wedding we knew that we wanted to begin making smoothies so we registered for our Ninja blender (read about our registered kitchen electronics here) which has been essential for making smoothies.

This past weekend Patrick and I put together for the first time an assembly line for our smoothie making containers. One thing I really like about smoothies is their adaptability. You can put whatever fancies your palette in them. Read on to see what we included in our smoothies!

The set up

We started with fresh bananas and sliced frozen strawberries. A few hours before we began the assembly line I sliced the strawberries and froze them. I did this so they wouldn't freeze to all the other items in the container and hopefully not have a big chunk of fruit when we take it out to blend the smoothie.

Here we have an hodgepodge of frozen fruit. There are plain raspberries, mixed tropical fruit, mixed berries, and plain blueberries. Patrick enjoys pairing different fruits together for a more cohesive flavor profile in the smoothies whereas I just throw a little bit of everything in there.

Next we add yogurt. I freeze the yogurt in our silicone muffin cups. It's about 1/4 cup of yogurt. I do this for a few reasons: 1) I don't have to worry about the yogurt spoiling in the fridge and 2) it's another frozen component to add to the smoothie which prevents me from using ice as a filler.

Finally we toss in two scoops of protein powder. These containers are "Smoothies for 2" and make enough for both of us. As I mentioned earlier when Patrick is concocting is smoothie flavors sometimes he will use just bananas and plain yogurt in anticipation of replacing one scoop of protein powder with Chocolate PB2 which is chocolate powdered peanut butter.

Then when we're ready for a smoothie, we empty all the contents in the container into the blender and finally add almond milk and puree! So simple.

I'm sure you're aware of all the hype surrounding "green" smoothies. Green smoothies incorporate leafy greens and vegetables. We tend to lean more towards fruit smoothies. Every now and then I throw in some spinach or an avocado into the smoothie but Patrick always seems to notice!

Do you have a favorite smoothie recipe?

1 comment:

  1. Smoothies sound good. Have never experimented much with them.

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