Just Bananas

Happy New Year to everyone! I sure have enjoyed these last couple weeks. I love having my kids home with me. We have had a very relaxed atmosphere around here. I have loved that because I hate waking the kids up at the crack of dawn and rushing them out the door for school. We've watched lots of movies, played lots of video games, slept in very late, played with all the new toys, reminisced about Disneyland, and been very lazy, and it has been awesome!

But............. I must admit that I thrive on routine as well and it is about time to get back to one. I have been pretty lazy about exercising and cooking well thought out meals as well, which is probably also why I haven't blogged much. Last night for dinner I basically just ate fruit. I had cut up some apples and oranges for the night before for the kids so since I wasn't very hungry that became my dinner. Impressive, I know!

But after my lovely dinner I decided a little dessert might be nice! I have tried this before and everyone loved it but how quickly they forget because when I said I was making a banana sorbet/ice cream kind of thing they didn't seem to remember they have had it before.

Before you get too excited about a healthy way to enjoy an ice cream like treat let me forewarn you that you need to have a food processor to make this. I know. Bummer if you don't have one. Mine recently died after a long 15 year life. I actually just bought this new one a couple days ago on clearance of course. I would love to have a really nice, heavy duty one, but after a trip to Disneyland and Christmas and our anniversary tomorrow, you settle for the decent but fairly reasonable food processor!

I found this one at Wal-Mart for $59. It is the Farberware brand and I have to say I think it is going to be a great processor! It is pretty powerful and I like that it came with a smaller bowl that works right inside the bigger bowl for small jobs.

Now back to the reason for this post.........just bananas. When your bananas look like this and you are tempted to toss them in the freezer just like this, remember this post and save yourself some time later and some frost bitten fingers and peel them and slice them up now and then put them in a bag and freeze them. Trust me! It is much easier to just plop the slices into the food processor then to try to peel frozen bananas and slice them without losing your finger tips.

I know this will be hard for you to believe but the only ingredient in this tasty frozen treat is frozen bananas. Yep! No recipe to follow or for me to type out, hooray!

I have seen this ideas on a couple of blogs before and like I said have tried it myself before and it works so incredibly! The first time I made it I made three different kinds, plain banana, banana berry, and a chocolate banana. All delicious! But what my family can't remember is that they all preferred the plain banana kind so that is what I made last night. I hit the pulse button a few times to get them going and to stop and take this picture for you. You will want to stop too and scrape down the sides a few times to get everything mixed in well.

It will take about 5 minutes or so of processing and stopping to scrape but you will end up with this nice, very healthy, and creamy banana ice cream. I used about 5-6 bananas to get enough for all of us last night. Yum! I wish I had more frozen bananas because just looking at this makes me want more now, for breakfast!

I did drizzle a little chocolate sauce over it for the kids which I think they preferred to the mixed in chocolate kind I made before, but I am guessing they would eat this just about anyway it was served. I don't even have to have any guilt over giving them this because it is only a banana after all!

I topped mine with just a little chocolate sauce (The picture is deceiving. It is really only about a teaspoon full.) and some sliced almonds because I like a little crunch in my ice cream. But eating it just plain is divine too!

Please, please, please give this a try! I know you will not be disappointed. It is definitely a portion of goodness in your little bowl!

If you want to try other mix ins then start with the banana first. Other fruits do not give you the thicker texture you need for this. If you would like to make banana berry mix in some frozen blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. For the chocolate just add some good cocoa powder or melt a good dark chocolate bar and let it cool a bit before adding it so it doesn't melt your bananas. Be creative and let me know if you discover some other totally delicious mix in!

Now it is 8:45am and I must go wake up my kids. They are going to die tomorrow when the clock hits 6:45am and their lights get flipped on. Poor things!