smoothie queens

i really like fruit smoothies but they don't regularly make an appearance in my culinary repertoire because i tend to not have fresh fruit on hand to whip up a smoothie on the spot. i like the smoothies from smoothie king, but they are pricey and, much to my surprise, are caloric mine fields (what? something billed as healthy can actually be fattening?? the horror!!).

on a recent trip to kroger, i stumbled upon yoplait smoothies in the frozen foods section (with the frozen fruit and cool whip).


i thought it looked interesting enough (plus alexandra's daycare teachers had recently told me that she loved when they had smoothies for an afternoon snack) so i picked up a couple of bags of the berry and banana flavor. to our delight, these are excellent! they come in 3 flavors - triple berry, strawberry banana and strawberry mango pineapple (we've only tried the berry and banana flavor). you just throw them in the blender with a cup of skim milk - the frozen berries and yogurt are already prepared for you. the packaging instructs you to use the stand-up blender, but i opt to use my immersion blender - the stand-up would probably do a better job chopping up the fresh fruit, but the immersion works in a pinch and it is less clean up. there are two servings per package, with one serving totalling about 110 calories and 1 1/2 grams of fat. they are delish and obviously get two thumbs up of approval from this little one:






(by the way, this totally seems like an ad for yoplait - sorry! i just love passing along a new favorite product!)