Great Smoothies

If you enjoy smoothies, stop buying the ice-based, powder flavored, artificially colored $5 mixes from the local smoothie store. The key to great tasting, full flavored, smooth smoothies is to use frozen fruits instead of ice.

For homemade smoothies, your largest investment will be the proper blender. You need to find an ice-crushing two-speed blender (not a handheld smoothie blender) and will probably pay around $100. Then buy a bag of frozen strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and any other type of frozen fruit you like. Pick up a bunch of over ripened bananas. You may want to purchase pineapple juice and mango juice, too. If you choose to buy juices, pick up extra ice trays. Finally, you need to purchase skim or plain soy milk to use as the liquid base.

When you get home, peel and slice the bananas no larger than ¼ inch then lay them flat in a plastic bag in your freezer. By keeping them flat, they are easier to break apart. Then pour the juices in the ice trays and put the trays into your freezer.

Once all of your ingredients are frozen, you can poor the liquid base into the blender followed by an equal amount of frozen fruit. Blend on low for about 1 minute, then on high until smooth. If you taste it and want a sweeter mix, add a high grade honey or artificial sweetener (Splenda® works well). You can make the mixture thicker by adding more frozen fruit or thinner by adding more liquid base.

If you decide to make this into an adult beverage, use alcohol that has been stored in your freezer and double the amount of sweetener you would usually add. By freezing the alcohol, you keep the smoothie from becoming too thin too quickly. Doubling the sweetener keeps the edge off of the alcohol.

Lastly, I never mix more than three fruits. Generally, two works best. Enjoy!

Smoothie blender links:

• Everything Kitchens


• Next Tag


• Kitchen Universe