Banana Smoothies

As Matt and Melissa know (from their recent trip to MA), Dave and I have been making a lot of smoothies as evening snacks.  To keep them as healthy as possible, we start with a frozen banana. I'm not a big fan of banana, but once you start adding the extracts and spices, I don't even notice that banana-y taste!  I'm going to keep this post as a running list of our favorite flavor combos.

As a general note, when we buy a bunch of bananas, we keep them on the counter until VERY ripe.  Then we peel and quarter each one and place it in a sealed container in the freezer.  That way, whenever we want a smoothie, it is easy to take 2 or 4 banana pieces (depending on if the recipe calls for a half or whole banana), and load it up in the Magic Bullet with the other ingredients.

One more note- where the recipe asks for "milk," we found that almond milk tastes good too! :)

Pumpkin Spice
1/2 cup pumpkin (canned or freshly cooked) I used a heaping 1/2 cup
1/2 frozen banana
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I used allspice, nutmeg, cloves, and a bit extra cinnamon)
pinch of ground ginger
Dave added a teaspoon of brown sugar to his

 pumpkin spice

Mint Chocolate Chip
1 frozen banana
cacao nibs (or chocolate chips) we used grain-sweetened chocolate chips
2 drops pure peppermint extract
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup frozen spinach
Dave likes his with cocoa powder too

Vanilla Chai
1 frozen banana
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
tiny dash each: pepper, cardamom, ground cloves, and nutmeg
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Other flavor combos I'd like to try....

Coconut
Some kind of combination of banana, coconut milk, coconut extract, and flaked coconut 

Chocolate Cake Batter
Recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie

Chocolate Covered Strawberry
Banana, strawberries, cocoa powder?, dark chocolate chips

Do you have any other ideas for flavors?

Photos of smoothies coming soon (Whenever I make one, I am too excited to drink it, and never end up taking a picture!!)