Strawberry Banana Smoothie

As I mentioned back in my Green Smoothie post a couple months ago, I couldn't wait to start sharing green smoothies with my son, and yesterday I finally did.  And I'm happy to report that I now have a little 11 month old green smoothie loving buddy! 

In hopes of not wanting to scare him away from smoothies forever, I decided to use two familiar flavors - strawberries and bananas - and to go easy on the spinach, adding a little less than half of what I normally would use.  I was tempted to leave out the spinach completely this first time, but I'm so glad I didn't.  I added a small handful of spinach, tasted it, and I couldn't even taste the difference, so I figured why not.  I also added the ground flaxseed to his smoothie as I normally add to mine, since it doesn't change the taste and is a great source of omega-3s, fiber, and antioxidants.  No surprise, he slurped this baby down faster than I could say smoothie.  In fact, he loved it so much that when I tried to take the sippy cup away from him to refill it, he responded with a death grip.  He did NOT want to let that thing go!  Thankfully, after a few silly smiles and a little coercing, I managed to almost willingly remove his fingers.  I refilled his cup and promptly returned it to him, and he greeted me with a big smile and happy little kicking feet. I have a feeling this will be the first of many healthy green smoothies for this little man.



As for serving it to the little man, I used a Dr. Sears Smoothie Sipper (photo at right).  I had attempted to serve it in a regular straw sippy cup awhile back with no success.  The straw wasn't wide enough to accomodate liquid with a thicker consistency and ended up being very difficult to clean.  I would recommend either using a regular cup with a disposable flexible straw or a sippy cup designed for thicker liquids, such as the Dr. Sears one.

Strawberry Banana Smoothie

Ingredients

• 2 cups frozen strawberries


• 1 large ripe banana


• 1/4 cup orange juice (or water or milk)


• 1 cup vanilla yogurt (I prefer greek yogurt)


• 2 Tablespoons ground flaxseed


• 1 small handful of baby spinach

Directions

1. Add all ingredients to a blender. 


2. Mix until smooth, approximately 2 minutes, stopping to mix the ingredients down with a spoon as needed.  Serve immediately or refrigerate.

Notes:  For the strawberries, I used half frozen and half fresh since I had a few fresh berries on hand.  If you were to use all fresh berries, then you might want to add a little ice to get the right consistency.