Peanut Butter & Jelly Smoothie
Recipe by Chris Newport, Nutritionist and Head Coach
I love peanut butter. Like, really, really love peanut butter. I’ll eat it in my oatmeal, dabbed on a dark chocolate square, schmeared on an apple, drizzled on waffles, or straight off the spoon. And who doesn’t love it on a sandwich? In fact, that reminds me of the “peanut butter jelly song” from several years back. It makes me want to do a little dance.
But since we don’t keep gluten products in our home anymore since a family member is gluten sensitive, we have to be creative on how to get that peanut butter and jelly “fix.” Quite frankly, I could do without the jelly. But what about adding berries instead of jelly? I’ve always made peanut butter smoothies, but I’ve never thought to put berries in there, thinking it’ll mess up the peanut butter “mojo” (which all you peanut butter lovers out there know what I mean).
Well, I’m officially wrong on that one. In fact, adding berries (instead of jelly) to a peanut butter smoothie is quite possibly the most awesome thing to happen to peanut butter in my household in a long time. And lucky for all of us in North Carolina right now, it’s the height of strawberry season. Here’s my little one dragging the mounds of organic strawberries we picked together at Vollmer Farms (which I highly recommend!) last week that I used in this smoothie.
This smoothie makes a great meal replacement or pre-workout meal. It’s a little high in fat for a recovery smoothie, but you can fix that by using a non-dairy milk or low fat milk (although I generally recommend the full-fat version). Keep in mind that if you replace the milk with a non-dairy version that you’ll be missing some of the protein, which can be replaced with a protein powder, if you choose. While I attempted to have this for dinner, I think I only ended up getting half of it, thanks to my little ones wanting “just one more taste.” In fact, my daughter isn’t crazy about peanut butter, but pretty much inhaled this my smoothie. She was caught licking the blender stick of the Vitamix. Good thing she’s cute, darnit.
Behold…the healthiest version of a peanut butter and jelly you’ll ever have.
Complete with 17g of protein, 6g of fiber, and plenty of calcium, magnesium, potassium, vitamin C and B6. As a balanced breakfast, you’ll be ready to do your own peanut butter and jelly dance all day long. Yup…it’s that good.
Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
Peanut Butter & Jelly Smoothie
Ingredients
- 1 cup organic whole milk or non-dairy milk
- 2 T organic smooth peanut butter
- 1 small banana fresh or frozen
- 8 strawberries fresh or frozen
Instructions
- Add the ingredients to your favorite blender (ours is the Vitamix) in the order listed and blend until smooth.
