USE YOUR FREEZER!

If you freeze some of your smoothie ingredients, you can get a thicker, frothier shake. Freezing also enables you to preserve summer fruit at its peak. So you can enjoy it a few months down the road. Here are some tips for using your freezer to maximize your smoothies.

You can freeze just about any kind of fruit for smoothies: cranberries, strawberries, blueberries, chunks of banana, sliced plums or peaches, melon cubes. With the exception of cranberries, which you can freeze directly in the bag they came in, fruit needs to be frozen in individual pieces first—spread out on a tray—before being packed into bags for longer-term storage. This keeps the chunks separate, so you can just take out and use the amount you need at any given time.

Freeze soy milk or coconut milk in ice cube trays, then pack the cubes into zip-style bags and use as desired. (It’s easiest to keep track of the volume if you consistently measure l½ tablespoons per cube.)