Coffee Break with Katie: Smoothie

One of the things that I love best about a smoothie is how easy they are to make, prepare, serve, and drink. Today I'm going to share my quick, simple, & easy smoothie hints, tips, & tricks.

First, collecting your "ingredients" for smoothies are a step by step process.  It's not something that is going to happen overnight.  Sure...you can go to the frozen fruit section of Walmart and buy already sliced and ready made smoothie mixes. Why?  Why spend the time & money for that?  Save your wallet and your sanity and use what you already have.  Sure, it might take longer to make the mix, but it will be better and more economical for you that ready made smoothie mixes packed with preservatives and who knows what else.

You'll see on my counter (shown above) I have pre-filled baggies of strawberries.  These strawberries were the "almost bad" strawberries from previous grocery weeks.  They were soft and a little mushy, not good for eating alone, but certainly not bad enough to throw away.  So, when they reach that precious in-between state of "good" and "bad," I freeze them for smoothies.  This is what you're going to do with all your fruit from now on.  No more throwing out almost spoiled fruit!  You can see I have "banana bread" bananas on my counter (which means they are WAY too soft to eat, but not to far gone to throw away).  I also have some very ripe clementines on my counter.  Here's your job....prepare them all and separate them into equal portions depending on the number of fruit bags you are preparing.  You can see here that I have five bags.

Now, here's the genius part.  FREEZE IT!  All of it.  Bananas, kiwi, grapes, blueberries, any fruit you have that has almost gone bad.  Freezing it keeps it in the state it's in.  It won't spoil or ripen any further!  Instant smoothie whenever you want one.  Before I made smoothies, it wasn't uncommon to throw out 1-2 bananas and 1-2 oranges a week.  Sometimes a kiwi or apple also.  Not any more!  The MAGIC of smoothies is that any fruit tastes good when blended all together.  During the summer when I have guests I have 30-50 bags of ready to mix smoothies to serve and I haven't spent any additional money to have them either...and because it's frozen, you don't need to add ice to it either.  Genius.

So how do I turn these magical fruit mixes into a party sensation called a smoothie?  Here's my recipe, but you can make up your own.

- 1 baggie smoothie fruit

- 1 cup OJ or Apple Juice

- 4 Tbs. Plain Greek Yogurt

- 1 Tbs. Honey

- 2 Tbs. ground flax seed (or you can use oats instead)

Mix all together in a blender.  Place in a cup, serve immediately, & enjoy.