Smoothies

... I almost forgot, my other favorite thing in my freezer right now: pre-measured smoothies! Pictured above are two separate kinds of smoothies:

• Almond butter, kale, banana with a dash of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg to be blended with almond milk (one of my favorite post-run snacks!)
• fruit with frozen discs of plain yogurt (previously frozen in a mini-muffin tray) to be blended with whatever fruit juice we have in the house at the time

I am constantly seeing coupons for frozen smoothies from yoplait and jamba juice that you can buy at the grocery store and blend at home and have even tried them when I could get a good price, but I wasn't that impressed. If I want Jamba Juice, I will go to Jamba Juice. It's worth the extra money to get a smoothie that tastes like Jamba Juice instead of making a smoothie at home that is supposed to taste like Jamba Juice, but actually just tastes like apple juice because I had to pour more juice in than recommended to get it to blend right. So after some not-so-good at-home smoothie experiences, I decided to just make my own smoothie bags for a lot less money and these turned out fantastic. But a quick disclaimer: the first time I tried blending the almond/banana smoothie it was straight from the freezer right after an 11-mile run and I about passed out before I could get it blended through (for real. I had to go lay down on the couch and take a power nap before I could try again). The second time, I put the bag of ingredients in the fridge just before heading out for a shorter distance and when I got home, the banana was still frozen in the middle but the kale and butter had thawed a bit so that it was much quicker and easier to blend. The fruit/yogurt smoothies haven't given me any trouble, probably because the fruit is sliced up fairly small and blends easily. If there were large pieces of strawberry or something in with it, there may need to be a small thawing window.