Saturday, July 19, 2008

Super Size Saturday


Cool Treats for *H*O*T* Days

I thought I'd take a break from "preaching" on Saturdays and share a practical tip. Hot summer days are amazingly wonderful......but they are H*O*T* if you live in the south!

Here are some of our favorite cool treats for summertime.

Fresh Fruit and Veggies: Obviously these make great snacks. Storing celery and carrot sticks in the fridge in water even makes them "cool"....but around here we need COLD snacks too.

Frozen Fruit: grapes, bananas, peaches, strawberries et al. We like to pop them in our mouth fresh from the freezer, occassionally I coat the bananas in chocolate and nuts.

Smoothies: We eat these year round but they are especially nice on a hot day. Honestly, they are nearly as good as ice cream AND they count as a serving or two of fruit. I use my frozen fruit in my smoothies to make the smoothie THICK like icecream. If you don't have frozen fruit, throw some ice cubes in.

My General Smoothie Recipe:1 large orange (or a couple of smaller ones) peeled and thrown in blender; 1/2 - 1 C yogurt (flavor your choice); 1 or 2 bananas; 1 - 2 C of other fruit - I usually use blueberries or strawberries, T of flaxseed oil, almond or vanilla extract. This makes a quart. If you find this too tart (we don't) add a T or 2 of honey or agave nectar.

Smoothie Pops: Freeze the smoothies in popsickle makers. Again a serving of fruit, cool and refreshing. I've also frozen them in ice cube trays. These can be eaten (a bit messy) or thrown in to the blender when making other smoothies.

Slushies: Deja got us started on these. We haven't been buying jucie but I have started buying a couple of types of no-color-no-preservatives-all-fruit juices.....NEWMAN O IS NOT HEALTHY but is yummy. We'll be switching to Minute Maid lemonade and pineapple/orangey that Deja likes. LOL I actually may try this with fresh squeezed orange juice and pineapple. Hmmm...

This is all you need
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Pour juice in blender & add ice (I always have to add more juice)
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Mmmm....Straw is essential around here
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Enjoy
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I did measure to make a personal 8 oz slushie: 1/2 C lemonaide, ice - 1 point (50 cal) I'd still rather have ice cream - but I like the cool treat without "spending" a lot of my daily calorie/point total. ::snort:: Deja has a cool blender with a spigot to make these and I'm thinking it would be so nice to have one that "pours easily" but it's a luxury at this point.

Click to read more Super Sized Saturday posts.

©2008 D.R.G.

6 comments:

Pam's Pride said...

YUM!! We are total smoothie-holics around here! We use pudding to make ours sometimes. Our favorites are vanilla pudding, frozen strawberries, milk and ice.....and our other favorite is chocolate pudding, milk, ice, peanut butter! YUMMO!! It tastes just like chocolate peanut butter ice cream!! We sometimes add bananas into them too.
We also have a good tangarine mix that someone gave us that is super good too!

Stephanie said...

I don't know why we've never thought of slushies, but that is perfect! I have some juice so I think we'll be making some this afternoon. We've also used pudding in smoothies. I like using frozen cherries, FF milk, and a TB of FF/SF chocolate pudding. It isn't healthy and the kid can't have it because the junk in the pudding sends her through the roof, but it's a great low cal/fat treat for mom. And, low points. (But, I do WW points so I'm not sure how it would point out for what you are using... since I don't know what you are using for your points. lol)

Jodi said...

MMMMM looks great!

Kris said...

De'Etta,

Quick question on freezing fruit, how do you? Can you freeze any fresh fruit or veggie? I think I've read that you prep and freeze ahead of time for meals and such, is there anything special to it?

We love smoothies and smoothie pops around here. I found a super simple berry recipe we like

2c berries
1c yogurt (we use strawberry or raspberry)
1 banana
1c milk
(I leave it out the suggested sugar-still yummy!)

I like this beacuse we get a dairy serving as well, something I am really bad about including in my diet.

As for the other, nothing to forgive, I got a good chuckle out of it. I tell you, I do miss that time and your friendship and fellowship. I look on it fondly.

In Him,
Kristine in NE

Anonymous said...

sounds good! I'm losing weight on icecream. :):):)

Mom T

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Kris - your recipe is the same as mine with the sub of a fresh orange instead of milk. I do the yogurt to get dairy/protein in with the carbs.....I'll have to try it with milk - only have one orange left.

I freeze my blueberries first - makes the drink thicker.

OH - fruit - I just wash it and pop it on a cookie sheet....single layer...freeze, then bag. I use mine withing a month or two so it really never gets bad.