The Thrifty Couple in the Kitchen – Super Healthy Power Smoothies Recipe

We are in the Kitchen again together – it is one of our favorite places to be! We love to cook, create and make new things.  We are not traditional cooks in that we really just create on our own! Thrifty Al has learned to go with the flow with me and not follow recipes but put in a bit of this and a dash of that and it is sometimes whala and sometimes blah!

This next recipe is one of our breakfast morning or after dinner favorites.  It is fresh fruit smoothies with awesome ingredients for a perfect powerhouse of nutrition.  It is Super Healthy Power Smoothies.

No two smoothies ever turn out the same and it is one of the simplest recipes you can make – plus the kids loooove it so that is always a bonus!

Here are the tools and ingredients needed for this powerhouse breakfast:

• Blender or Magic Bullet – we actually bought a Magic Bullet knock-off with 43 pieces at ShopKo about 18 months ago on clearance for $19.99. It has been a trusty little blender system.
• Fresh or frozen fruits – we love the berries, peaches, mangoes and pineapples. It is a great time to “clean out your fridge” in deciding what fruits to use up.
• Milk
• Yogurt – we love the plain organic or Mountain High yogurts.  You can use yogurt with flavor too. We buy our favorite yogurts when they are cheap and stock-up.  Whatever we cannot eat fresh, we freeze and then they are perfect for smoothies.
• Honey (not pictured – forgot to add it to the picture :))
• Supplements.  This is a perfect recipe to add any vitamins or supplements that you or your spouse or your children need to take that you have a hard time taking. Or if you just simply wanted to add a bit more nutrition.  In the ones we made today – we used Flaxseeds and Organic Fiber powder. By putting these in your smoothie – everyone can take them without notice.
• Ice

The steps are really quite simple:

• Layer the fruits and ice in first – also, this is a fun recipe where everyone can literally customize their own drink with the ingredients they wanted. Our kids wanted “all berries,” Thrifty Al wanted blackberries and strawberries, and I loooove peaches and so it was peach and blackberry for me! You will want to layer up to about 2/3rd’s full. Also, we have heard and read that blending fruit from a fresh or frozen (previously fresh) fruit brings out the nutritional value of the fruit when it is then consumed immediately. Apparently the seeds harbor wonderful amounts of nutrition that only last for several minutes once they have been exposed by breaking open – so this really is the best way to eat them.  Anyway – we wanted to add this tidbit and we are going to go with it because it sounds super cool! But we are not making any “official” nutritional claims 😉

• Pour in 1 cup of milk so that it can settle in around the fruit and ice.
• Then add a few scoops of yogurt, a scoop of flaxseed/supplements that you wanted to add.
• Finally, add the sweetener of honey (about 1-2 tablespoons depending on liking) or natural sweeteners such as Stevia to taste. Please be aware that if you are using flavored yogurts – you may not need to add any additional sweetener.

• Stick the lid on top and place it on your Magic Bullet (or knock-off) and start blending! The blending time will vary depending on how chunky or smooth you want your drink. We typically blend about 30 – 90 seconds.  Our kids like their really smooth so they can easily sip through a regular straw.  We like it a little thicker so we can eat the chunky fruit.

• Pour into a glass and serve! Our kids love it when we had the special little things like a fruit garnish! It is a perfect drink for parties for summer too as your guests can customize their drink and add a fruit garnish and little umbrella.

Be prepared for everyone to go “Oliver Twist” on you! Our kids do nearly every time. And we don’t mind a bit 😉

A few tips:

• Rinse the blender/blending cups and tools immediately.  It only takes a couple of seconds, but if you don’t it will be a dozy to scrub the caked on seeds and fruit from the cups and blender later! Trust us…. we have done it a few times and finally learned that taking a couple of seconds now saves minutes, minutes and minutes later!
• Buy your fresh fruit and berries when they are super cheap, stock-up and then freeze them so that you have them through out the year at the “in-season” price.

We recently did this! About a month ago – one of our local markets was selling pints of blackberries and blueberries for only $1.00!! We were so excited that we stock-up and bought 2 cases of each for a 24 pints of each berry.  We then left them in the plastic containers and whatever we did not eat fresh – we froze in the containers.  By doing this – they freeze separately.  We then pulled the containers out and dumped the berries into gallon size bags. We filled up 4 gallon bags of each berry! We typically use about 1 bag every 5-6 weeks between this recipe, desserts and ice cream sundaes.  So this will last us quite a while. Also, at Target recently, they had bags of organic raspberries, blueberries and blackberries for $1.58 a 12 oz. bag.  We only stocked up on Raspberries as we already had the others. But keep your eyes peeled now for the berry deals!