Shake It

I've discovered THE BEST alternative to a milkshake. Or as I tell my kids it's so healthy I would let them have it as an after school snack. I'm not much of one for "health food" per se. I think most products created as an alternative taste fake and I would much rather eat real veggie and fruits and forego something delicious then eat a fake tasting substitute. But I tried out this recipe from Women's Health Magazine. I use the term "try" fairly liberally because I didn't follow it at all but it gave me the inspiration.

We call it a Chocolate Smoothie. Here's the ingredients:
Almond Chocolate Milk-  It's only 30 calories more per cup of milk then a cup of fat free milk, but only 1/3 of the calories in pre-prepared chocolate milk you would buy from the store
Nutella- You could use peanut butter too.  The first time I made it with PB it turned out good, but it's way better with Nutella.  They have about the same amount of calories.
Ice 

Here's the directions: (not like it's hard but I'll give ya some tips:-)
Fill the blender half way up with ice cubes.  Spoon in a couple of heaping teaspoon fulls of nutella or peanut butter on top.  Make sure not to touch the glass otherwise all those delicious calories stay on the glass of the blender.  Fill the rest of the blender with ice.  Pour about 3 cups of the Chocolate Almond Milk on top of the ice.  Blend until smooth.  You will probably have to mix it around a few times to thoroughly crush the ice.

It makes roughly 3-4 servings for a total calorie count of 150-180 calories each.  Seriously, it's the yummiest healthy snack ever!

It's chocolaty enough and creamy cold!  Which makes it perfect for us in Cancun where our condo is stocked with the world's best blender but there isn't even a baking sheet or pyrex dish to cook anything in the oven with.  Also, since it takes about an hour to checkout and get back to our condo from the grocery store, ice cream isn't really that easy to transport.  However the local Sam's sells Chocolate Almond Silk in bulk.  Which really amazed me because we usually can't find regular refrigerated milk here.  The milk in Mexico is shelf stable and sold in cartons.  They have like 50 brands to choose from and I figured they would have some that are chocolate flavored.

And it's been kid tested and kid approved!

Chocolate smiles don't lie.

BTW- One of my favorite things about vacation is that my kids are playing so beautifully together.  They are usually pretty nice but they will play like 6 or 7 different games each day, most of them made up which is fun too!

So if you actually read what I wrote at the top I'll give you the Women's Health Magazine recipe.  Or at least what I can remember of it.  It called for Vanilla Almond Milk, Peanut butter, a dash of cinnamon, and a cup of blueberries (or something like that).  See not really the same, but it was my inspiration.  Maybe I'll try the vanilla version when my mom comes.