Tropical Smoothie (with Mango)

By Vicky Nardone

Today's post is about my all-time favorite drink: smoothies.  The recipe I made today is with my favorite fruit - the mango.

We picked out a few at the store last weekend and they were perfectly ripe when we went to use them today.  You know a mango is ripe when it's slightly soft when you squeeze it.  We used our juicer to get the juice from the mangoes.  Matt had really wanted a juicer and my mother-in-law got us one as a bridal shower gift.  We love making pineapple orange juice with it too!

I cut the mangoes.

And Matt juiced them:

Here's a good tutorial for cutting a mango if you don't know how: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_cut_a_mango/

Once we juiced the mangoes, we threw them in the blender with a banana and a half cup of orange juice.

And blended it all up with a bunch of ice for about 3 minutes:

And the result was two delicious smoothies for Matt and I.

I'm very excited because in about 15 minutes or so Matt and I are leaving to go out for our Valentine's Day dinner at Black and Blue steakhouse which we love.  Matt promised we could go to Steve's Pets beforehand and look at the puppies (**with gleam in her eye**).

I gave him his gift this morning (a new tardis hat because he felt the other one was too big) and I dressed up the wrapping paper all pretty.