For 42 years I have been the head of the cooking department for a household whose dietary habits are mostly influenced by food lore and kitchen superstitions; toast and Cheerios; my blatant disregard for timing (grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast and popcorn for dinner); my life-long refusal to make fried chicken because I am not cleaning up that kind of mess and besides, my friend sustained third-degree burns when she fried chicken; my distaste for bananas; anything starting with "pancakes"; and my extreme annoyance regarding anything related to the grocery store ("can't you just eat fish sticks and dried apricots for dinner, because that's what we have and I am not going to the store now; I promise I'll make steak and baked potatoes tomorrow").
It's hot in the valley, and sometimes we like a cool drink in the afternoon. And I try to live by my motto, "let someone else clean up the mess", so we are big fans of Jamba Juice. If someone is making a Juice run, my order is "anything that doesn't have a ground-up banana in it". So, it's established we like cold, blenderized, fruit-flavored drinks.
Now, I realize that for most folks a cold, fruit-flavored drink involving the use of a blender means Daiquiris, Margaritas, or Pina Coladas. We have an entirely different idea about liquid refreshments--ours are milk based, discovered by accident! Most people call it a fruit smoothie, but we call it elixir, nectar of the Gods.
Remember my dislike of bananas? A couple months ago, I had planned to eat one banana that had been lingering or malingering around the kitchen, and then the next day I again planned I would eat it, and then the next day, I planned to throw it away. But I thought I would give a blender drink made with a banana a chance, and how bad could it be anyway, especially if Greg drank half; after all, it is just fruit, and I am not wasting food that I have had to chase myself to the store to get. I blended up the banana with a carton of yogurt, some milk and soy milk, and frozen raspberries. Oh, my gosh! I don't know the magic part of these ordinary ingredients, except that perhaps it happens when everything is whirled together. We are hooked! We have had some version of this every day except one in the past two months, and the day we didn't have it, everything went wrong!
So far, the only two required ingredients are the banana and a cultured dairy product or dairy substitute. Even if you are on a diet (especially if you are on a diet), this is a great drink as you can regulate the amount of sugar and fat. We use kefir or yogurt, the banana, soy milk and whole milk, and any kind of fresh, frozen or canned fruit. Our favorite addition is frozen mango chunks.
It is easy, it is cheap, you can keep enough ingredients on hand so you don't have to go to the store every single day, the variations are unlimited, and it can even be used as a meal, especially if you are a little old grandma or grandpa.
Check out this crazy cat! Yes, that is a begonia he plans to eat. I bought the double red begonia at the grocery store on Valentine’s Day, thinking I had a nice little gift for myself for $2.47. Because it was still too cold to put it outdoors, I set it on the kitchen windowsill. The plant started shrinking and losing leaves, and the leaves that remained looked like they had paper cuts all along the edges. Newman is not a jumping cat. He doesn’t care to jump up on the countertops or stove, so we didn’t even suspect that he was jumping up in the sink so he could chew on the begonia. As the begonia starting shrinking, my first thought was “it must have a bug in it”. This is the power of denial: We could hear him jumping and said to each other, “That sounds like Newman jumping on the countertops or stove, but he never does that”. We finally caught the little bugger standing in the sink so he could reach the begonia. 
