Mocha Java Smoothie

Hello!  It's been a while.  We went on vacation to Atlantis in the Bahamas, with a stop at Universal Studios, FL.  It was a lot of fun, but I'm really sick of restaurant food!  There were some amazing things I would love to recreate... notably, the coconut french toast I ate for breakfast every day, a "super high fibre" muesli, and Bobby Flay's blue and yellow corn muffins with flecks of red jalapeno from Mesa Grill.  But by the end of the trip, I was craving homemade food and dying to cook for myself.  So I'm glad to be back home in my own kitchen.  Things will be a bit busier now that school has started, but I've whipped up a few easy things so far; everything else has come from the freezer (for which I am very grateful).  For one lunch I made Greek Salad Pitas with Feta Spread and Turkey from Ellie Krieger's book So Easy.  I don't have a photo or anything, but they were tasty and easy and I'm fairly certain I'll make them again.

The focus of this post, however, is the Mocha Java Smoothie from the same book.  As you can see from the photo, it is creamy and delicious and was a fabulous breakfast.  As the recipe notes, it's your morning coffee AND a filling breakfast.  The banana gives it substance while remaining in the background flavor-wise.  The coffee and chocolate are more prominent, but next time I'd love to do a double shot instead.  Best of all, this is one of those recipes you can prep for the night before.  You can put all the ingredients in the blender, sans frozen banana and ice, and have breakfast in mere minutes.  I love to make smoothies and take them in a to-go cup - I have one with a lid where you can fit a straw perfectly through the drinking hole.  When I'm done I can toss the straw and close the cup, if need be.  My smoothies in the past always focused on the fruit, with little in the way of protein, but I'm really liking Ellie Krieger's smoothies with milk and yogurt.  This one is my favorite so far (and probably will be overall), but I look forward to making up a few of my own as well.