I am kind of sick of every link to everything telling me about the AMAZING whatever that will TOTALLY CHANGE MY LIFE FOREVER or the five habits that are KILLING my productivity. But once in a while something awesome comes into your life and you are so excited about it, it would be rude not to tell the internet about it. Once you try this smoothie hack, I double dog dare you to go back to the old way of making smoothies.

I’ve always loved smoothies for breakfast, but now that I’m off of wheat and dairy (at least temporarily while we figure out what’s bothering the baby), I am obsessed with them. I eat one for breakfast, sometimes for a snack, and occasionally as part of my lunch. They are the perfect post-workout fuel, and they’re a ridiculously easy way to get more veggies into your life.

Until now, I thought it was just a fact of life that making a smoothie involved dealing with at least four different ingredients (ice, milk, fruit, protein powder) plus all your extras (chia seeds, flax seeds, veggies, nut butter, etc). It was annoying but I was willing to suffer through all of the ingredient gathering and putting away in the name of my deep love for smoothies.

Then I saw something in my Pinterest feed and I was never the same again. It turns out, you can batch process your smoothies. This is a) highly efficient and b) gives you no reason not to start your day off with a nutritionally dense, delicious breakfast.

What you need:

About 20 minutes
12-20 sandwich sized ziplock bags
A large ziplock bag
Everything you want to put in your smoothies other than the milk

Start with your first ingredient, and put however much you want in your smoothie in each of your baggies. Repeat with every subsequent ingredient. I recommend shoving in as many greens as will fit in your baggie as the last step.

Here’s what I put in mine:

A serving of Skoop protein powder. I just discovered this stuff and I LOVE it. Skoop is a local Boulder company and their protein powder provides whole food sourced nutrition, including 16 grams of protein per serving. It’s gluten-free and dairy-free, which is important for me, as I have given up wheat and dairy for Lady Bug. In addition to creating an awesome product, Skoop rocks because for every serving of product they sell, they donate a serving of free fruits and veggies to a U.S. school lunch program.

Most protein powders contain whey, which is a dairy product, and therefore off-limits for me. A common alternative to a whey based formula is soy, however soy doesn’t really agree with me, so I won’t eat that either. I love that Skoop leaves out all the stuff I am avoiding.

Skoop also gets major points for having the important qualities I look for in a protein powder- it tastes good and it blends well. The taste is mildly sweet (not overwhelmingly sweet), which I like, and it mixes relatively easily, which I cannot say for the other soy and dairy-free products I’ve tried.

About a third of a banana. I love bananas because they give smoothies a thicker texture.

About an eighth to a quarter cup of canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling!).

A few frozen strawberries

About a teaspoon of almond butter

A tablespoon or so of chia seeds. I can’t help putting in something weird, this is Boulder. And they’re supposed to be full of Omega-3’s and all kinds of other desirable nutrients.

A generous fistful of kale or spinach.

Once I had each of my bags full with each ingredient, I sealed them, and placed all twelve of them in a large ziplock bag. This keeps them from getting into random hiding places in the freezer.

This may seem obvious, but you should not add your milk (or water, or whatever you like to add for liquid) to the baggie. You pour your liquid into your blender with your pre-frozen bagged ingredients when you’re ready to blend.

I found that it was necessary to get my baggie out to defrost the night before, as my blender couldn’t handle the big, frozen chunks. Whether you need to do this or not depends on how powerful your blender is. I keep telling Dan that if we had a Vitamix, our life would be so much easier, but he’s not on board for a $600 blender (yet). I have to admit though, it’s kind of nice to get the ingredients out the night before, because then you start the day out with a commitment your smoothie.

I can’t imagine ever going back to the old way of smoothie making, now that I’m accustomed to dumping the contents of a prepared ziplock into the blender with my almond milk. Even counting the time it takes to scrub the blender and wash out the baggie (does this make up legit hippies? Or is it the chickens and the home births…) this smoothie is quicker (and cheaper) than grabbing a bagel at the Einstein’s drive through.

This is a sponsored post but as always, all opinions are my own.