Freaking Fabulous: Choco-Banana Smoothie

Feeling Frosty?

I know, I know.  I've been terribly slacking on the blogging.  I realized today as I made my Fireball Chili, that it's been a really long time since I've posted anything.  I've been busy.  And by busy, I mean not just with work and kids and summer and life in general.. but busy as in too busy to track my food and assume that because I ran a half marathon I can eat what I want when I want.  My point is, I'd have been a hypocrite if I had been posting healthy lifestyle tips to the interwebs while slacking on the healthy eating.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way...

Have you noticed that Facebook has become the Pinterest and Instagram of the 'older' crowd? Most of what I see posted is recipes, photos of our kids, shared photos of pins from Pinterest, and memes?  I can't tell you how many times a day someone I know will fall for a like-phishing post and share something in the hopes that they'll get a free iPad or Disney vacation.  One of these annoying recipe shares I keeps seeing is a skinny version of the Wendy's Frosty.  I gotta say, I love me a Frosty.  What I don't love is the ridiculous amount of fat/calories/WW Points Plus in said Frosty.  So, I tend to avoid Frosties at all costs.  Tonight, however, I decided to make my own version of the 'skinny' internet version floating around.

Here's what I used:

• 3/4 cup original Silk Almond Milk (1 WW PP)
• 1 frozen banana (I have some on hand for smoothies and other things - I freeze the last couple in a bunch as they're about to get too spotty for my family to like) (0 WW PP)
• 2 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder (1 WW PP)
• 1 packet of Weight Watchers vanilla smoothie mix (2 WW PP)
• a boat load of ice cubes (like 15-20, depending on how thick you want it.. I lost count)

I tossed all of that into my Ninja blender and I have to say.. it's no Frosty, but it IS delicious.  It's a nice alternative to a thick ice cream shake or something.  The Points Plus value was a little hard to determine.  If you add up the WW PP values of the ingredients, you're looking at 4 PP for the whole thing.  If you use the WW e-tools recipe builder, it says 7 PP because it will take the nutritional value of the banana into account despite all fruit being free.  I counted it in my tracker for the day as 2/3 of a serving when I created the recipe so that it was only 4 PP taken out of my day.

So, if you're feeling like you neeeeeeeeed some ice cream, I'd say you're safe with this versus going to Wendy's and getting a 20 point version that you don't need.  Tomorrow I might try the WW Mint Cookie smoothie mix with the frozen banana, almond milk, and some chocolate chips, since my ice cream of choice is Mint Choco chip.  And yes, before you ask, I DO have a Yonanas maker, but I cannot typically stand bananas, and the Yonanas starts to just be semi-cold, mushy bananas after a couple of minutes, so no, that's not going to cut it for me.

Enjoy!