Recipe: Oatmeal Banana Smoothie

I'm always in search of delicious, fast breakfasts -- who couldn't use a few more minutes in the morning?  This is a great, quick breakfast provided you have a blender handy.  The oatmeal gives bulk and texture -- if you don't like bits of oatmeal in your smoothie, you may want to add less and blend until the smoothie is very fine.  Personally, I blend until the ingredients just start to come together, so there are sometimes still small bits of banana at the bottom of the glass.

This blueberry version is a recent incarnation -- I imagine a strawberry variation would also be fantastic!  To keep things simple though, start with the oatmeal banana version and then go from there.

RECIPE:  Oatmeal Banana Breakfast Smoothie

1.5 cups of milk

0.5 cups of plain yogurt*

1-2 teaspoons granulated sugar, depending on the ripeness of your bananas.

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 bananas, broken up into 3-4 pieces each

1 cup of old-fashioned rolled oats**

Add ingredients to blender in listed order and blend to desired consistency.  Makes two super-tall glasses.

For the blueberry variation, add a scant 3/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries.  (Or substitute another fruit of your choice.)  This will make a little over two glasses (as pictured, except I drank most of one before taking the photo!).

One of the beauties of this recipe (as with any smoothie) is that it's quite open to adapatation.  For milk, I usually use 2% but you can use your favorite.  Soy is the best substitute for a non-dairy version.  I've tried this with almond milk and didn't think the flavors were quite as spot-on.

*If you use Greek yogurt, I would suggest 1/4 cup of yogurt mixed with an additional 1/4 cup of milk -- otherwise the texture gets too thick.

**Because of the amount of oatmeal, you can't make this smoothie too far in advance -- otherwise, the oatmeal will absorb a lot of the liquid and the smoothie will become quite thick.