Smoothies

For your sakes, I hope it’s cooling off where you live. But we’re in the desert, and it’s still 115* here most days. Because of this, I’ve been making smoothies a lot lately! This week at my local grocery store they had strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries on sale, so I grabbed some of each. Yesterday’s smoothie was strawberry banana, and today’s was a little bit of everything.

These are SO super easy, VERY healthy, and refreshing. You can go spend a couple bucks to get a smoothie at Jamba Juice, or you can make one yourself for a fraction of the cost that tastes just as great. This is one of those “method more than recipe” type recipes. You can add anything you like to customize. This is just the way I’ve been doing it. You could even add yogurt to yours if you have it on hand to make it more creamy. Or use orange juice (or any other kind of juice) or even just water to thin yours out a bit if you don’t want to use milk. You could even add protein powder or Slim Fast type powder if you’re into that sort of thing.

I think smoothies are a great idea to serve at a breakfast or brunch function. It would be super easy, and you could even have your guests customize their own before you blend them up.

I just saw a breakfast smoothie today on Pinterest that I’m super excited to try out (it has oatmeal in it!), so I’ll post that as soon as I do!

Smoothies
Printable recipe

Ingredients:
fruit
ice
splash of milk

Just put everything except milk into the blender…

…and blend away!

Add a splash of milk, if desired, to thin the consistency. This is because we like straws at our house.

Look at those pretty colors!

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Blueberry Muffins

I got a pretty good deal for blueberries at the store last week, so we've been eating lots of them the past few days. After a few days of blueberry buttermilk pancakes, the fam was getting a bit tired of them, so I decided to make some into muffins. You know, to change things up a bit. I'm daring like that.

Making muffins is super easy! Okay, not quite as easy as opening a box of Jiffy, but it's definitely easy. And it tastes way better. And you can actually tell there are blueberries in these muffins, and not just some weird, tiny blue dots that are supposedly blueberries.

STEP AWAY FROM THE JIFFY BOXES!!!!!

I got this recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. There are all kinds of variations to this basic recipe listed in here. You can do banana muffins, cheese muffins, cranberry muffins, oatmeal muffins, poppy seed muffins......just to give you a few ideas. ;)

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 beaten egg
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cooking oil
3/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Grease your muffin tins with butter or cooking spray, or line with baking cups. Set aside. In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center of the mixture. In another mixing bowl, combine egg, milk and oil. Add egg mixture all at once to the flour mixture. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy and very thick).

Gently fold in blueberries.

Pour batter into muffin tins, filling each one about 2/3 of the way full (makes 10-12 muffins).

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool in muffin tin on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Remove from pan and serve. With honey butter is best.

Do you tend to use pre-measured box mixes, like Jiffy? Or are you a cook-it-from-scratch kind of person?

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Strawberry Peach Smoothie

I don't know about in your neck of the woods, but in mine, it's bliseteringly hot already. As in, it's been over 100 degrees for a few weeks. Yesterday as dinner time was approaching, I couldn't bring myself to turn on the stove or the oven. I used my trusty electric griddle to make BLT's, and then I remembered a recipe page I'd just clipped from one of my magazines that was full of tons of smoothies. I thought it would be perfect, and it was! Really yummy, refreshing, and my kids all thought I was giving them dessert with their dinner! ;)

When I made it, I wanted something a little thicker, more shake-like, so I added some ice. But that part is totally optional.

Ingredients:
2 cups vanilla yogurt
2 cups fresh strawberries
2 cups fresh of frozen sliced peaches
2 tablespoons sugar
ice cubes, optional

Rinse and slice your strawberries.

Put all ingredients into the blender and pulse until thoroughly mixed. Garnish with whole strawberries (cut a slit in them and stick them on the side of the glass) or sliced.

What's your weather like??

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