How To Build Fruit and Veggie Smoothies With What You Have On Hand (and The Trick To Make Them Taste Good Too)

It is time to share more on Building Better Breakfasts for Less.  One of the key breakfasts in our home and one that at least Alex and I have everyday is a fruit and veggie smoothie. They are sometimes all fruit, but nearly 1/2 fruit and 1/2 veggie everyday.  It is an easy way to get the daily servings of fruits and veggies easier to swallow 😉  Plus, we find that it fills our tummies for many hours.

One of the best parts about making your own smoothies is that it is useful in cleaning out your fridge and counter of fruits and veggies that you need to use.

Now when we introduced the topic of Building Better Breakfasts for Less, the key was giving you tips and tools to make many affordable breakfasts with foods that are affordable everyday or in-season!   We also said that we are not going to just merely share recipes, but rather provide those tips to create these breakfasts with what you have on hand – essentially improvising everyday, but the easy way.

So with that, here’s our tips on how to make all fruit or 1/2 fruit and 1/2 veggie smoothies that anyone is willing to drink as they taste really good.

Base ingredients:

• Any fruits will actually work well in the smoothies.  We have yet to find fruits that do not work in the smoothies.  So whatever fruits we have, they will go in.  By far, our family’s favorites are the berries, mango, pineapple, grapes, citrus fruits, peaches, plums, nectarines etc.  We will put things like apples, melons and pears in the smoothies if we need to use them quick 🙂
• A liquid of some sort – we usually use our Kefir Water, but you can use juice, milk, almond milk, rice milk, soy milk or just plain ol’ water.  The more liquid you use the thinner the drink!  You can also be daring and use a vegetable juice base.
• Finally, you can add veggies too.  Now unlike the fruits, not all veggies will work and taste good.  We’ve tried several and some combinations created strange textures that none of us liked, like broccoli or cauliflower. However, this doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t like them, that is just our experience!  But here’s a list of veggies that work very well in smoothies:
• Spinach
• Kale
• Celery
• Tomato
• Carrots
• Avocado
• We actually have almost all of these on hand weekly.

Here’s the important trick to make any combination of veggies and fruits taste good and to mask the veggie flavor and make you think you are only drinking fruits!

That trick is to add bananas or oranges or even better is to add some of both.  We have found that these two fruits will mask any flavor and make your smoothie drinkable for anyone and any picky kids 🙂 We would recommend even freezing bananas for the times that you might need them. Orange juice also works well when you don’t have fresh oranges.

Now that you have some base ideas, to make the smoothies, you can use fresh or frozen of any of the above produce.  We have a stock-pile of frozen blueberries, strawberries and pineapple that we use pretty regularly and then other times we are blessed with other combinations of frozen fruits, which means we do not need to add ice.  But if you are using all fresh, you will want to add ice to reach the desired consistency you want.

You will also need a powerful blender.  We were blessed and surprised to have won a Vitamix from the Dr. Oz show, but we were making these smoothies long before having the big daddy of blenders. We just used a Bullet knock-off before using our Vitamix that cost around $20 with a sale.

Steps:

• Pile in the fresh foods first
• Second add the frozen foods, or ice if using all fresh
• Then pour a bit of liquid into the blender to get the process started
• Start your blender and then as the blender is blending, add more water or ice as needed until you reach the desired consistency.
• Add your bananas and oranges to taste

So there’s the basic idea, fridge clean-out, super healthy, and edible for anyone smoothie tips.

But there is so much you can do in this category.  If you like veggies, consider making just veggie smoothies.  If you have picky eaters and do not have bananas or oranges, consider going light on veggies or making it just a fruit smoothie so the picky eater will drink it 🙂

So now here’s some ideas to include more ideas to make them more hearty, healthy and even protein filled!

• Try adding plain or flavored yogurt.  I wait for big sales or markdowns on the big tubs of organic yogurt.  It is usually plain, but the fruits and veggies make it taste great!
• Add Flaxseeds – this is a fantastic and one of the easiest ways to sneak in the Omega-3 packed food into your diet.
• Add any extra probiotics – like kefir – or from the bottle even! Another fantastic way to throw in those health boosts without noticing.
• Finally, you can make this more filling and add extra health boost by adding Wheat Germ.  We use raw wheat germ, which doesn’t get an A in taste, so this is an easy way for us to incorporate that too!

The great part is that those fabulous bananas and oranges also help to mask any “extra protein or health boosting” additions to our smoothies.

It is amazing what a smoothie breakfast does for our day and how great we feel. Like I said, Alex and I usually start with one when we get up in the 5-am hour. Then our kids eat breakfast around 7:30 – 8ish and so I make this again for them about once or twice a week, usually when we are nearing the end of the week before the next shopping trip and trying to use up all of the remaining fresh produce.

With that information, you are set to build a smoothie out of most any produce that you have on hand with no need to follow a recipe just to discover that you are missing something.

Here are some frugal tips to make this more affordable:

1. Stock-up and freeze any in-season fruit that you get for cheap, like pineapple 😉  Most any fruit can be froze, we haven’t ran across any that you can’t.
2. You can freeze many (not all) vegetables with the same idea.
3. It is also a frugal thing to make if it means you make these or throw out spoiled produce because you didn’t use it. 🙂
4. Finally, there are many more tips on getting produce for cheap, in-fact we have shared 30 of them HERE on our post about 30 Way to Save Money On Produce.

With that, since this isn’t a recipe per se, but merely our personal guidelines on how we make smoothies at our home, it seems silly to put it in a printable recipe.  However, when I see something I love online, I wish I could print it easily and keep it in my home binder.  So with that, I am making this available using a recipe format 😉

Here are some breakfast smoothie foods we always have on hand to give the extra health boosts on top of the great fresh produce deals we snag each week locally. We get them from Amazon most of the time with the great prices. Also, this is one of the best consistent prices for a high-quality blender that is available on a regular basis.   Check them out!