It reached nearly 100 degrees here last week, so our smoothie season has officially arrived. In the hot summer months, smoothies and smoothie popsicles save us from the heat by giving us a quick way to cool down after being outside. The kids and I often have smoothies after going for walks, working in the garden, doing chicken flock maintenance, or just about any outdoor task from May through August.
I recently created a very simple smoothie recipe that we'll be returning to over and over again: Creamy Strawberry Banana Smoothie. It's made with just plain whole milk yogurt, frozen strawberries, a ripe banana, and a drizzle of honey. What a nourishing, delicious way to cool off!
Creamy Strawberry Banana Smoothie
Serves 3-4
one quart of plain whole milk yogurt*, preferably organic (or substitute whole milk kefir)
one-10 ounce bag of frozen strawberries**
one ripe banana
2-4 Tb mild flavored raw honey, depending on the sweetness of your fruit and the tartness of your yogurt/kefir
dash of Celtic sea salt
Dump the quart of yogurt into a 7-cup blender. It is important to put the yogurt in BEFORE the fruit in order for the blender to be able to work properly.
Add the frozen strawberries, banana, 2 Tb honey, and salt.
Turn the blender on low and allow it to start blending. With our blender***, it works well to turn up the speed once the smoothie is about half-blended.
Once the smoothie is blended well, taste-test to see if you need to add any additional honey.
Pour into glasses and enjoy! We love to use reusable glass straws or metal straws with our smoothies.
If there is any extra smoothie, it can easily be made into smoothie popsicles****.
Recipe notes:
*Yogurt: Mild flavored yogurts such as Stonyfield Farm or Brown Cow work better in this recipe than more-tart yogurts.
**Strawberries: For the frozen strawberries, we LOVE Stahlbush Island Farms frozen berries. They have superior flavor to any other frozen fruit we've tried.
***Blender: We've had a Braun blender for over 10 years, and it has worked fantastically for smoothies. (Our previous blender could not handle smoothies at all.) Sadly, our Braun blender seems short for this world, and that model is no longer made. Based on reviews and Consumer Reports, our next blender will probably be either the Oster Pro 1200 Blender or the Oster Reverse Crush Counterforms Blender.
****Smoothie Popsicles: I love re-using single serving yogurt cups for making homemade popsicles. They release the popsicles much easier than jars or other popsicle molds we've tried in the past. To make smoothie popsicles, just pour smoothie into the yogurt cups and place in the freezer for about 30-45 minutes before putting in the popsicle sticks. We have found it works fine to re-use the popsicle sticks with just a quick rinse after each use, so we wrote our names on the sticks.
This post is part of Weekend Potluck!
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