I mentioned on Monday that DIY Breakfasts are one of the ways that we keep things simple in the kitchen during the summer.

I also mentioned that my 7 year old son, after a year of training, does most of the breakfast preparation himself. That got a few people excited that one day their children will also be making meals! Absolutely! One of the ways that he is able to do this is following basic recipes, which I’ve written down for him.

One of our favorite breakfast foods, or really eat-anytime foods, are smoothies. We keep a stock of frozen fruit in the freezer, mostly flash frozen after buying fresh from the farmer or from the local farmer’s market. I usually buy enough to last us most of the year. After Easter this I froze over 50 pounds of strawberries, which will last us until strawberry season next year. We also freeze peaches, nectarines, bananas, blueberries and blackberries. Or sometimes I just buy already frozen from Costco. Whatever works for our family's current season our family.

Bananas: We buy a lot of bananas, usually from Costco. Sometimes we eat them all before they go brown, but often we don’t. I will peel them, break them into smaller pieces and freeze them for smoothies.

Fruit: As mentioned above we have a store of frozen fruit. I also keep all those half eaten peaches or apples and slice them up and freeze them to use in smoothies. A great way to make sure we’re not wasting valuable fruit.

Yogurt: We almost always have yogurt on hand. It’s sometimes homemade and it’s sometimes whatever I’ve purchased for a great price at Grocery Outlet. Whatever we have is what we use in the smoothies.

Liquid: This is seriously just whatever liquid we have on hand – orange juice, apple juice, almond milk, pineapple juice from little cans I keep in the pantry for this purpose, and even whatever is left from the bottom of the Crystal Light pitcher (I personally hate Crystal Light, but my husband drinks it.) Sometimes when I’m at Grocery Outlet they will have coconut milk marked down and I’ll buy that for smoothies, which is my favorite.

Bonus: I like to add greens to our smoothies whenever possible. We usually have spinach around because of the guinea pigs. Or I save the tops from the beets I picked from the garden. Just whatever green stuff we have around. My oldest son will drink his weight in smoothies if I let him and it’s a great way to get vegetables in.

Using this formula my son, or anyone else making smoothies, can make a great smoothie. We never know quite what we’re going to get, but really you just can’t go wrong!

Note: We have a Vitamix blender, which means that we can put frozen fruit in without worrying about breaking the blender. If you don’t have a heavy-duty blender I recommend thawing the fruit a bit before blending.