Copycat Strawberry Surfrider Smoothie

We have some wonderfully beautiful weather lately, with more to come! That makes me all sorts of giddy! Though I am a little sad that we haven't had any descent snow this year, just a little. We've gone sledding a whopping two times this winter, and they were both in a weeks span. Usually by this time in the winter I'm tired of sledding and longing for swimming and sprinklers. But not this year. We've been hiking and running around outside, it's so nice!

In the spirit of warmer weather, my mind drifted to the Strawberry Surfrider smoothie from Jamba Juice. It's my all time favorite Jamba smoothie. It's so refreshing, especially when it's hot out. Granted I wouldn't call it "hot" out, but it was still nice to indulge even with just warm weather. After some research into what goes into a Strawberry Surfrider, I made some substitutions as to not put sherbert in it, and what I came up with was so very close to what I remember!

Here it is in all it's "whole food" glory....

Ingredients:
1 organic lemon, peeled
Juice of 1/2 organic lemon
Juice of 1/2 organic lime
1/2 lb organic strawberries
1 TB organic raw agave (or honey)
1 cup organic raw milk
Handful organic peach slices (mine were frozen)
3 scoops organic strawberry whey protein (not totally necessary)
1 cup crushed ice
Water to cover

Throw all ingredients in a blender, VitaMix is preferable, and blend! This recipe made about 50 oz.

Banana Bread Breakfast Smoothie

This is a great smoothie to start off your day or a mid-day power packed snack. The first thing my husband said about it was "It tastes like banana bread!" There originated the name! My kids slurped this down in minutes.

Makes 4 servings:

Ingredients:
3 cups organic raw milk, or almond milk (coconut milk might be yummy too!)
2 frozen bananas
2 shakes organic cinamon
2 ts raw organic honey
1 avocado
1 cup organic granola, or "grainy" type cereal. (I used Cinnamon Raisin Ezekiel 4:9 cereal)

Blend all ingredients for a minute. Enjoy!

Blended Salad Meets Smoothie

So for the first time, a few weeks ago, I started adding greens to our smoothies. I was scared for a long time to try it, but now I'm so glad I did. You can barely taste it and it adds greens, vitamins,  nutrients, fiber, etc etc, to an already good for you smoothie! So go for it, try it! Oh...and after about a week, my husband wanders into the kitchen sipping on his smoothie, and says "Hmm, it's like blended salad meets smoothie, awesome!" hahaha!

Here's what we do, but you can vary this up a lot.. Different fruits, different greens, different seeds, etc.

In a blender add:
    -1 cup plain yogurt (you can totally use flavored, but I make my own yogurt and it starts out plain, so that's what I use)
    -1-2 cups spinach (I really just grab a huge handful)
    -1-2 cups kale (again, I use a really big handful)
    -1 cup frozen blueberries
    -6 strawberries
    -1 banana
    -2 tb honey
    -2 tb flax seed
    -2 tb hemp seed
    -2 tb chia seed
    -4-8 oz of milk or water to make it "smoothie" consitancy

Blend it up and serve!!! The recipe above makes approximately 3-4 adult size 12 oz servings. For us, we have 2 12 oz adult servings, and 3 kid size cup servings...and a little left over for whoever wants it. Enjoy this for breakfast and start your day off right. Great meal replacement!