Bananas for Banana Smoothies

     Here is a house hold favorite: Banana Smoothies.  Bananas are so amazing.  God is so awesome.  They grow on a tree in huge bunches, you can pick them when they are green and ship them across the world so that they do not spoil before they make into my kitchen.  On top of that, you can do all kinds of things with them.

     Our favorite thing to do with them use to be banana bread.  I have not gotten baking with nuts down yet, so I do not venture to try to give anyone advice in how to conquer the nut flour equation.   It is interesting to me that the difficulty of a thing can completely change your mind about it.  For example, my love of getting out of the house.  Come winter, this desire will completely disappear.  The amount of work (and I like work) required to dress four children in warm things, from head to toe, mount looming snow drifts and arrive at a destination in one piece does not bring joy.  Staying home, at that point, brings the joy.

     So!  Our new favorite thing to do with bananas is Banana Smoothies!  They are so easy it is ridiculous.  We buy bananas in huge quantities to keep up.  So many, in fact, that very frequently we are asked if we keep pet monkeys at home, to which I most definitely say, "Yes!"

     We let the bananas sit out on the counter until they have lots of little brown spots (that means they are sweeter).  Then we peel them and line them up on cutting boards and load them into the freezer.  Once they are frozen I condense them down to a Ziploc bag, and try to keep them on hand.  I am not always successful in this endeavor.

     When we have enough frozen bananas, I pull some out to make smoothies.  (I also have to have yogurt on hand to do this.  I will post that recipe next.)  We have a Magic Bullet, so I take one "cup" for each kid and I fill it with one inch chunks of banana.  I then pour home made yogurt on top, screw the lid on the "cup" and blended it with the Magic Bullet.  That is it.

     The most interesting thing about this recipe is how it is not too sour (from the plain home made yogurt) and yet how not too sweet it is either.  I am not one for really strong banana flavoring.  The yogurt and banana combo here makes for a really interesting texture and flavor.  It really tastes a lot like a plain vanilla milkshake or maybe more like a protein shake.  It is really quite tasty, and so easy.  And the kids love it, as you can see.