Recipe Craft Site









Fruit Shakes
Serves one adult/teenager or two kids

  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup liquid
  • Additional fruit or flavoring
  • Optional sweetener -- grapes, dates, honey or sugar


To make, break frozen banana into pieces and put in blender. Cover with liquid up to 1-cup line on blender. Add any additional fruits, flavorings or sweeteners. Blend until consistency of milk shake (usually 30 seconds). Serve immediately (banana will start to brown if you don't). Enjoy!

NOTE: Clean out blender and cups immediately after drinking, since the fruit particles tend to get stuck to the dishes.

The ingredients
This recipe is extremely versatile. You can vary them to comply with your diet or special needs. These shakes are great alternatives for those with diabetes, food allergies and intolerances and vegetarians. Experiment and have fun! And please e-mail me with your fun variations!

Here are descriptions and ideas for each ingredient:

Frozen bananas -- I buy them when they are dirt cheap, peel and deep-freeze in Ziploc-type bags. In a deep-freezer, they will keep up to a year without darkening, but in a regular refrigerator freezer, they start turning at 3 months. Frozen bananas give these shakes their creamy consistency, and you generally can't taste them. If you don't like bananas and don't want them in your drink, substitute crushed ice instead.

Liquid -- You can use milk, water, soy milk, rice milk or juice. All work just fine. Milk will give you a creamier shake. If you use water, add a little at a time until you get to the consistency you like. Juice is a great way to sweeten these drinks, and it adds some fun.

Sweenters -- Any fruit of your choice, extracts, drink mixes, syrups, jams or spices. You'll see lots of examples below. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination! If your shake turns out on the tart side, you can sweeten it naturally with honey, pitted or chopped dates, raisins, grapes or juice. You could also use the traditional method -- add sugar. If serving for breakfast, try to keep it as healthy as possible.

Vanilla

  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup milk/soy milk
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract


Blend together. Yummy!

Chocolate
  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup milk/soy milk
  • A few squirts of chocolate syrup


Blend.

Strawberry Cream
  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup milk/soy milk
  • 1 handful of strawberries, washed and sliced
  • 1 to 2 pitted dates to sweeten (optional)


Blend.

Blueberry Fool
  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup milk/soy milk
  • A handful of blueberries (use as much as you want!)


Blend.

Purple Cow
  • 1 frozen banana (or 1/4 cup crushed ice)
  • 1/2 cup grape juice
  • 1/2 cup milk


Blend.

Peanut Butter Dream
  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup milk/soy milk
  • 2 tsp of peanut butter, creamy or crunchy


Blend. (My oldest son loves this one -- it tastes like peanut butter ice cream! Great with chocolate syrup too for a "Reese's" shake.)

Pina Colada
  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup milk/soy milk
  • 1 to 2 tsp. shredded coconut
  • 1/4 cup chopped or crushed pineapple (fresh is best, but canned is pretty good too)


Blend. One of my personal favorites!

Apple Pie
  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1/2 peeled, chopped apple
  • 1 cup apple juice
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • Pinch of nutmeg


Blend. Great substitute for applesauce! Control the consistency by adding more or less chopped apple.

Key Lime Pie
  • 1 frozen banana
  • Juice of one lime, diluted with water or milk to make 1 cup of liquid


Blend. Use milk if you want it to be creamy. This one is really good!

PBO -- Pineapple Banana Orange
  • 1 frozen banana
  • 1 cup orange juice
  • 1/4 cup fresh or canned pineapple


Blend.

Melon Coolers
  • 1 to 2 cups chunks of frozen, seeded watermelon
  • 1/2 to 1 cup of water (enough to thin consistency to milk shake)


Blend.

Note: Watermelon freezes very well and is ideal for summer shakes. I like to deal with the storage problem of melons by cutting into chunks and freezing. If you don't want to seed the watermelon, you don't have to -- the seeds will float to the bottom of the glass.

Julius Shakes
  • 1 cup juice
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 egg white
  • 3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 cup ice (crushed is best)


Blend at high speed. Serves 2.

Note: The egg white is to make the drink frothy, which it is famous for. You can omit the white, or use that powdered egg white (I think it's called meringue powder) that is sold in the Wilton baking section of most stores.

Here's what I do: I wait for a sale on eggs, then get them home, separate into whites and yolks and freeze. I freeze the whites in small ice cube trays. I put the yolks into juice cans with 1/2 tsp salt and once frozen, put in a Ziploc-type bag. When I want to make a Julius or meringue, I take out the white in cubes and throw them in. Variations: Try any juice. Some of my favorites are pineapple, strawberry, lime or cranberry. Try mixing different kinds too. Cranberry and orange would be great together, and there are so many juice blends at the store. Experiment to your heart's content!





Craft: "Curtains"




Make your own curtains! (If your parents don't mind). Buy a cheap white sheet at Building #19 or anywhere. Also buy something to decorate it with. You can use washable, tempera, or poster paints but MAKE sure something is underneath because it will leak through, and it is generally messy! Paint is hard to work with. Better ideas are: foam (at Walmart or craft stores), Felt (definitely at Michael's, not sure where else, but it's fairly cheap), large, colorful buttons, paint markers, colored feathers, pompoms, pipe cleaners, or buy a lot of self-sticking velcro so you can velco things on, and change them when you want to!





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