Berry Smoothie: With and Without Dairy

There are so many different ways to make smoothies that appeal to different tastes that I debated whether I should write about we make smoothies at our house or just assume that the thousands of “recipes” out there are enough. As your reading this, you can see I finally decided to go with the former 🙂

I usually make a frozen smoothie using frozen fruit, thus no ice to water it down. My family’s favorite seems to be any that include berries…blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc.

No matter what other fruit I include, I add frozen bananas. It adds to the thickness, flavor, and coldness of the smoothie. The banana as a staple in a smoothie was an idea that I got after reading about a man who had started a pawpaw(or paw paw) tree farm because he found a market selling paw paw fruit puree to companies that commercially made smoothies.

Having grown up with a pawpaw tree in my backyard, I knew that it was referred to as the “West Virginia banana.” Despite not looking or tasting that much alike to me, I thought I should add a banana to the first smoothie I ever made because I didn’t have a pawpaw on hand. I liked it and have been using bananas in most of our smoothies ever since. In fact, my eight-year-old has started making her own smoothies and includes a frozen banana….just like mom 🙂