Lately I have fell head over heels in love with smoothies. I honestly can’t remember ever eating a “healthy” good normal breakfast. I gave these a go the other day and loved them and have had one every day since then. SOOO yummy. I buy all my fruit in bulk cut and freeze in bags and then in the morning I pop the frozen fruit, milk and yogurt in the blender and call it good.

So where do I buy this bulk fruit you ask? Sam’s club, they have Great prices. I recently went and got a pineapple, 3lbs bananas, and 2 lg packages of strawberries for $13. How can you beat that? So thanks to MyBlogSpark I am giving away a $25 gift card to a lucky reader to stock up on fruit, school supplies or whatever else is your favorite thing to buy in bulk.

To enter leave a comment sharing your favorite thing to buy in bulk and why.

*You have until August 3rd at 8am central time to enter. The winner will be announced shortly after. Must leave a valid e-mail address, winner must reply back without 48 hours of being announced. If not a new winner will be selected.

**The Sam’s Club gift card, information, and giveaway have been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark.

Fruit Smoothie (From: Myself)

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 6 strawberries **you can sub ANY fruit you want!**
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 cup pineapple

Put all ingredients into blender and blend until desired consistency. Pour into glass and enjoy!

Over the weekend I had some friends over to celebrate my birthday. I am not a big drinker, and a big reason of that is I don’t like the taste of most liquor. So I have trouble finding something I like and can actually drink. I fell in love with Malibu on my 21st Birthday, it was one of the ONLY drinks out of the many my brothers made me try that I enjoyed. Since then it is my standby. I always end up with a Malibu and Coke.

For my Birthday I wanted to try some new drinks since we would be home were it was cheaper and we weren’t out $5-$6 on a drink that I might not like. I ran across this recipe trying to find recipes with watermelon pucker which we have had for a long time.

This drink is AMAZING! My girlfriends and I ended up drinking these all night long. You can not taste the liquor at all. It’s just a yummy tropical delicious treat.

Tropical Treat (Inspired From: Online)

• 1 shot grenadine
• 1 shot Malibu rum
• 1 shot Watermelon pucker
• 12 oz. pineapple orange juice
• 1 cup of ice

Pour all ingredients into shaker and shake until well mixed.

Pour into glasses and enjoy.

My lovely mother introduced me to the wonderful Nutella. I don’t really love it spread on my toast but love the flavor and love it with pretzels. As soon as I saw this recipe it was a must make. Delicious fun take on normal hot chocolate.

I know my pictures aren’t that great, but this one is horrible. For that I am sorry, but I had to share this recipe and the camera was not cooperating for me to drink my drink hot.

Nutella Hot Chocolate (From: Cassie Craves)

• 2 cups milk (whole or 2%)
• 5 tablespoons Nutella
• 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• Whipped cream, if desired

Heat milk over gentle heat in a medium saucepan. Stir in Nutella and chocolate chips until melted, smooth, and heated through. Serve topped with whipped cream, if desired.

I first had this punch at my Grandpas memorial service, I fell in love with it and couldn’t get enough of it, I asked my mom to make it for my baby shower as well and as soon as I started planning the menu for Maddys baptism I knew I once again had to make this punch recipe and finally feature it on my blog.

The punch is super easy throw and go, finding the sherbet on the other hand can be a challange, I forgot to put it on my grocery list and asked my mother-in-law to pick it up on her trip, they didn’t have it. I made two other trips to the store for things once again forgetting. I asked my Dad to pick up some on his way to our house and he had to go to three stores before finding it. If you are unable to find it I think any can of sherbert would work just give it different flavor. Thus the only reason this punch can be hard to make.

Punch (From: My Grandma)

• 2 liters giner ale
• 1 quart orange juice
• 1 lg. can pineapple juice
• 1 quart lime sherbert

Pour ginger ale, orange juice, and pineapple juice into a punch bowl.

Scoop in sherbert let melt for 5 minutes or so.

Serve

I love when march rolls around for one reason and manly one reason alone. Mc.Donalds gets their shamrock shakes, they are my favorite, sadly this year I only got one. I have had this recipe starred in my reader forever and finally got around to making it. Well actually Adam made these.

These had a little too much peppermint flavor to me, but you could easily use less and it would be fine. They for sure fill the void when you can’t get to Mc. Donalds.

Shamrock Shake (From: Lauren’s Kitchen)

• 2 cups vanilla ice cream or soy ice cream
• 1 1/4 cups 2% low-fat milk or soymilk
• 1/4 teaspoon mint extract
• 8 drops green food coloring

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend on high speed until smooth.

Stop blender to stir with a spoon if necessary to help blend ice cream.

Pour into 12-ounce cups and serve each with a straw.

I went out to dinner with my Grandparents a few months back, when the waiter came to take our drink order my grandma pointed to the menu and ordered it. When it came I tried and sip and it was wonderful, I later searched into what it was and have since started ordering it when we go out for Mexican. When I saw Joelen post a recipe on her blog I knew I had to have my Grandma come down and serve this. It went perfect with our Mexican themed dinner.

After talking to Joelen she said the longer you can let the rice sit in the water the better off you are, I did 24 hours and it seemed to work great. This was SUMMER yummy and I really enjoyed it!

Horchata (From: Joelen’s Culinary Adventures)

• 2 cups uncooked white long-grain rice
• 10 cups water
• 2 3-inch sticks of cinnamon
• 2/3 can of condensed milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla paste (or extract)

Pour the half of the rice and half of the water into a blender; blend until the rice just begins to break up, about 1 minute. Pour rice and water into a large pitcher. Repeat with remaining rice & water.

Strain the rice water into a pitcher and discard the rice and cinnamon sticks. Stir the condensed milk and vanilla into the rice water. Chill and stir before serving over ice.

I hosted my bff Ashley’s bachelorette party Friday. We started out the party here then went bar hoping. I wanted a signature drink that was simple and could be the one drink of the begining of the night. My wonderful friend Amber pointed me to the recipe. I am SOOO glad I tried this. I wanted to get as much stuff done beforehand as possible. I mixed this Tuesday night and then just stirred in the morning and at night, can’t get much simpler.

As for taste, this was a very light summery drink.

Yukon Jack Punch (From: Ambers Delectable Delights)

• 1 bottle (750 ML) Yukon Jack whisky
• 2 large (46 oz ) cans pineapple juice
• 2-3 two-liters Sprite or 7-up, chilled

In a large bowl mix together the entire bottle of Yukon Jack and both cans of pineapple juice. Mix well and place in freezer. Stir every 12 hours or so to keep the liquids mixed well. Mixture is ready to serve when it is frozen slushy, it usually takes 2 to 3 days to achieve this. Store mixture in freezer to keep it’s slushy consistency.

When ready to serve, fill a glass 1/3 to 1/2 of the way full with slush mixture and top off of with Sprite or 7-up. Garnish with skewer of fresh fruit (pineapple and cherries are good) if desired.

Better late then never is what I am telling myself, I had no reason to wait this long to make this, but I did have an excuse to not post it, but that wouldn’t of been a problem if I had made the recipe earlier in the month. We are gone most of the weekend for my brothers graduation and then last night when I got home to post it, my host site had an electrical fire and my site was down… I guess this is the joys of my own site… So on to the recipe…

As promised my May tasty tool event. As soon as I saw that this months tool was a blender I knew that I would need Adam for this one. I am always in a rush to get out the door in the morning and never have time to grab a decent breakfast. So I asked Adam if he would be willing to make smoothies, he said sure. So he I bought a few smoothie books and found some recipes online. So far this is by far my favorite recipe.

I asked him to make this, I would have a glass and then I had recently bought some popsicle molds that I wanted to try, so we made orange creme popsicles too. Mister Kitty was very interested in them when I took them out of the freezer!

Orange Smoothie (From: Smoothie Web)

• 6 oz Orange juice concentrate — frozen
• 1 c Milk
• 1 c Water
• 1/4 c Sugar
• 1/2 ts Vanilla
• 10 Ice cubes

Place all ingredients in a blender. Cover and blend until smooth.

Pour into popsicle molds and freeze for 24 hours, then enjoy.

• 1 can coke
• ice cubes
• 1 shot of Root Beer Schnapps
• 2 Tb. Half and half

Put 2 or 3 ice cubes in the cup, then pour in shot of schnapps.

Pour in coke, then add half and half. You can do more or less depending on your preference.

ENJOY!

I have been in the mood for a good smoothie lately. I don’t like chunks of fruit so a smoothie is an excellent way for me to get my fruit. This was my first attempt and I kind of made my own recipe but it was AWESOME!

Strawberry Banana Smoothie (From: Myself)

• 2 bananas
• 5 strawberries
• 1 small yogurt, I used fat free vanilla
• 12 ice cubes

Blend all ingredients in a blender. Enjoy. This made 2 smoothies.