Toasted Oat and Blueberry Smoothie

I initially started out with no idea how this smoothie was going to pan out. I knew I had berries in the freezer, oats I wanted to toast, and I needed a pre-breakfast snack STAT. Basically I was just throwing things into the blender without abandon, hoping something good would come out of the whole thing. On Sundays at our house, breakfast becomes more of a long, drawn out affair, with pancakes or waffles, potatoes (I’m showing you how to make those next!) and another savory side. While I do love cooking a bigger breakfast on a lazy Sunday morning, sometimes I just wake up and I’m hungry like… NOW. I had been sipping on smoothies all weekend since I had done some prepping and blended some up earlier in the week, but I was out of those and needed something with a little more substance to it. Behold, oats!

Toasting up the oats in a pan is pretty quick and easy, but if you don’t want to dirty another pan or are just impatient/hungry (I get it!), throw them in untoasted. Toasting the oats isn’t completely necessary, but I think it adds a little bit of carmelized goodness to the smoothie, so just take those extra few minutes and do it. You can also feel free to use any berries you might have around. I know blueberries aren’t necessarily in season, but come this time of year I start to hoard frozen bags of berries like it’s nobody’s business, so I usually have some variety of berries tucked into the freezer. Also, the vanilla extract is totally optional as well, but really, who doesn’t want to feel a little bit fancy and add some homemade extract to their smoothie?

I also added more liquid than normal because I will NOT tolerate a chunky smoothie (blegh!), but it just depends on where you like you drinks on the juice to sippable meal scale of smoothies. I’m all over the juice side of the scale, since chunks in smoothies just creep me out and if I’m going to chew a smoothie I might as well have just eaten a real meal, right? Just my smoothie feelings for the day. Enjoy!

 

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