I cannot say enough good things about the smoothie. In fact, this is one key way that I get my kids to eat their fruits and vegetables. Making your own smoothies is healthy, you can come up with an infinite amount of variety and you have complete control over the sugar content. I never use juice in mine because I don’t want the extra sugar, but instead I use yogurt and milk. Also, you can sneak vegetables into your smoothie and I promise, your kids will NEVER know. (Well, at least if they don’t see you making it.)
One mom recently told me that she doesn’t have the time to make smoothies and so she just buys drinkable yogurt. To each his own, but drinkable yogurt has sugar in it (not to mention that it’s expensive.) Also, rather than being fresh raw fruit, drinkable yogurt has ‘fruit like product’ or fruit that’s been processed–in other words it’s not the same as combining fresh fruit and yogurt.
One trick that I use to make smoothie prep easier is I mash bananas and freeze them when they start to get too ripe to eat. When I’m ready to make the smoothie, I have something that is cold and already pureed that adds a nice texture to the drink.
Our most recent addition to the smoothie repertoire has been this recipe that has club soda in it. This recipe will feed my family of 7 so if that’s too much for you, either make half of the recipe or put the leftovers in popsicle molds and freeze them for a delicious and nutritious treat later.
Peach Yogurt Fizz
2 cups of frozen peaches
1 cup sliced bananas
2 cups of vanilla yogurt
1 cup of dry milk powder
2 tsp sugar
A dash of vanilla extract
1/2 cup club soda
1/2 cup V-8 Tomato juice
DIRECTIONS
1. Whirl peaches, yogurt, milk powder, and sugar in a blender until smooth. Pour into 7 or 8 juice glasses and add club soda to top.
If you’re freezing the leftovers, freeze without the club soda.
Have you seen the Families Cookbook?
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