Fruit Smoothies

When Autumn was practicing for DYW at 6 A.M. she would go to her friends house after practice to get ready for school. Her friends mom always fed them breakfast and a fruit smoothie. Autumn told me she felt great drinking these smoothies, they gave her more energy and helped her use the bathroom easier (sorry TMI.) So we decided to make the smoothies at home. It has probably been 4-6 weeks and I cannot believe the difference. Rich and I are both loosing weight, we have very little sweet/chocolate craving at all. Even if we do try a candy bar it does not taste good to either of us. Rich is a HUGE diet coke drinker. He can easily drink 6-7 a day. He usually wakes up and opens a diet coke first thing in the morning. Now he has a smoothie instead and drinks only 1-2 diet cokes a day. My goal is to get rid of the soda all together. Plus I LOVE the fact my kids are getting extra fruit and vegetable servings. Especially Tymber, she really does not like fresh vegetables or many fresh fruits. Many days we will make two smoothies, one in the morning and one in the evening. Hope always begs us for one. Especially if we are craving something sweet, blend up a smoothie and craving is gone. I was really surprised Rich would like them because he has a texture problem with food and really is not a berry fruit eater because of the seeds. He LOVES them.

I don't have any type of recipe that we follow. I always add strawberries, banana, handful of spinach, juice (apple or orange, we prefer apple)and plain yogurt. We also try to add a little flax seed. I try to buy fresh fruit if it is on sale, but fruit is pretty expensive so with the exception of the bananas and right now strawberries it is all frozen. I figure with the money I save on pop and sweets I come out ahead anyways.

I also try to add raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and a mixed mango/peach combination. Have added cucumber, kiwi, papaya, fresh apples. Any type of fruit is great. Amazingly the spinach cannot even be tasted, at all. Unless you knew it was there you would never know the drink had spinach.