A Healthy Breakfast ;]

Hope your week is off to a great start! It’s grocery shopping day for me. Did I tell you all that I have cut back to doing one major shopping trip 2 times a month with only trips for produce and milk between. I’m loving that and so is my budget- our grocery bill has gone down by about 18%!!! Plus, I spend less time at the grocery.  Isn’t it the small things in life that bring pleasure? I’m thinking of trying to cut it back even more to once every 3 weeks, but I have a teeny pantry so not I’m sure if that will work. What is your best time/money saving tip concerning stocking the kitchen?

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie Recipe
serves 2

2 bananas sliced and frozen

1/4 cup oats

1/4 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup milk

Put oats in blender and blend until they’re powdery. Add remaining ingredients and blend until there are no more chunks of frozen banana. Garnish with fresh banana slices if desired.

Healthy Pumpkin Pie Smoothie Recipe makes 1 serving

1/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 banana sliced (and preferably frozen if you like a thick smoothie)
1/2 cup milk
a dash of cinnamon to taste
1 teaspoon of raw, local honey (optional)

Combine all ingredients and blend on high until it is smooth. You may add more milk 1 Tablespoon at a time as desired if it is too thick.

For me a perfect smoothie is really thick so this recipe is for a smoothie that you could almost eat with a spoon- like ice cream. Not that I’ve ever fed this to my child calling it ice cream. He gobbled it up like it was the best treat ever :) If you don’t want yours quite that thick, just add a little more milk.  And, you may want to add a tiny bit of sugar if you use berries that are not very sweet.

A few more of the house favorite smoothies are mixed berry smoothie, peanut butter banana smoothie, banana mango smoothie and last (but not least!) is pumpkin pie smoothie.

Berry Banana Oatmeal Smoothie
makes enough for 1 hungry person or 2 smaller servings

1 banana cut in slices and frozen
4-6 strawberries, cut up (freeze them if you like a really thick smoothie)
1/4 cup oats
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (try making your own homemade vanilla extract)
3/4 cup milk (more or less to suit your tastes)

Put the oats in the blender and let it run until they are ground up to be a powder. Add the remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth. You may want to add more milk to thin out the smoothie as needed. I ended up adding 1 cup of milk in all.

See you soon,