Smoothie On the Go!

No matter how many times you shove 'you must eat a good breakfast' down my throat, I will NEVER be able to drag myself out of bed half an hour earlier before work to make myself a good, whole hearted breakfast. However, in my quest to become healthier, I decided that maybe just maybe I will have 5 minutes to whip up a quick smoothie in the morning. Well, when you take into account taking out the blender, slicing and dicing up fruit, cleaning up afterwards my 5 minute window is shot. As you will find out within the next few weeks, I have a deeply unhealthy love for my chest freezer. I freeze anything and everything. I decided there has to be a way to freeze my smoothies, that way I can make a months worth of smoothies in advance. In fear of having my already-blended-now-frozen smoothie separating as it was thawing, I decided I would freeze all the ingredients in one simple Ziploc bag without blending. So last night, I did my usual once-a-month-grocery-shop trip, I bought a HUGE bag of frozen fruit (where we live, frozen fruit is always much cheaper than fresh, unfortunately), bananas, a few containers of yogurt, oats, chia seeds, and a tub of spinach. I threw one-smoothie-quantities of the ingredients into Ziploc bags and froze them. This morning was my first smoothie made from my make-ahead baggies. It was DELICIOUS!  Super quick too! I grabbed the baggie out of the freezer, dumped it into my blender, added 1 cup of water and voila! Finished! Threw it into my water bottle and ran out of the door.

Now you may ask - oats in a smoothie?? Gross! But no! It's delicious, I will admit that they make the smoothie a tad grainy. If you can overcome the graininess, then they are a great addition to a breakfast smoothie. The oats help make you feel fuller longer, which is always a great thing. Not to mention the chia seeds which are always wonderful.

To make things easier, I use a Hamilton Beach single serving blender, it makes it super easy to clean since its not so big. I also found the best water bottle for the smoothie, it is Rubbermaid's 'chugging' water bottle. The opening on the lid is large enough so that the smoothie can flow through easily (unlike some with straws), and the lid clasps shut which is great. When I am running into the office with my purse, lunch bag, my tea, and now a water bottle full of smoothie, I do not have the time or patience to worry about something spilling all over me due to the lack of a tight fitting lid.



Tips
1) Blend the oats on their own before adding them to the Ziploc bag. By blending the oats, it will cut down on the graininess
2) Add flax!
3) Sub water for coconut water