Delicious Banana "Ice Cream"

All through school and college I was very active. I was a ballet dancer in a pre-professional company. That meant hours of dance most weeknights and almost every weekend. Honestly, I enjoyed being so active. Once I graduated college and landed my first teaching job, I started to feel sluggish. I just felt like I didn't have the stamina I used to. I found myself getting out of breath doing minimal physical activity. After some serious thought, I decided to pick up running to get back into shape. I figured this was the most convenient workout. I could do it almost anywhere with minimal equipment.

Once I started running, without really thinking about it, I also started eating healthier. I noticed I had better runs, and just felt better overall, when I ate healthy. The more I've started running, the more conscious I have gotten about what I eat. I still consider myself a very beginner level cook and am still experimenting a lot in the kitchen. My latest experiment was banana "ice cream."

Now, I will admit. I was a skeptic. Has anyone else seen those Yonanas commericals? I figured there was no way that actually tasted good. Boy, am I glad I was wrong!

There are a lot of different versions floating around the internet for how to make this delicious frozen treat. I sort of messed around, combining the basic idea of several.  This is my little recipe for one serving.

Ingredients:

1 frozen banana

1/8 cup of skim milk

1 tablespoon peanut butter (I like to use the low salt kind.)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

I combined all of the ingredients into my little food processor. (Yes, it really is tiny enough that one banana almost fills it completely!)

When finished, the mixture should be nice and creamy, just like the consistency of ice cream! Make sure you get all the little banana chunks smoothed out. They can be hard to spot at first!

And that is all there is to it! Now you can enjoy your delicious frozen treat without all the guilt! I basically inhaled mine. It was so good. I also tried another version where I substituted the tablespoon of peanut butter with unsweetened cocoa powder. It was good too, but I prefer peanut butter over chocolate.

Have you changed your eating habits since you started running? Was it intentional?