One of my favorite things used to be banana ice cream shakes from Ruby’s Diner.  Man, I loved those things.  Of course, this is years ago when I used to eat dairy products.  While I was pregnant with my daughter (21 years ago, yikes!), my unhealthy eating led to gestational diabetes.  I was told that the last few months of my pregnancy would be ones with ZERO sugar, not even fruit! I was devastated, especially because I had just started feeling well after dealing with morning sickness for 5 months straight (another reason I wish I’d known more about health and the best ways to take care of myself).  Why am I telling you this?  To illustrate how much I LOVED those darn banana shakes.  8 hours after I gave birth, I was allowed to go back to eating whatever I wanted.  Guess what the first thing I wanted was?  A Ruby’s banana shake!  My sister and her friend brought me one in the hospital and I devoured the entire thing.  If only I’d known what harm I was doing to myself AND my nursing baby.

What can I say? I was young, dumb and uninformed.  Now that I’m oldER, wiser and quite informed, I still love banana shakes (and anything “banana”) but I know better than to consume them.  I could, of course, just replace the milk and ice cream with non-dairy versions, but that’s not much healthier.  Sure, there’s none of that pesky, unhealthy dairy protein or saturated fat, but there is still a lot of other fat and tons of sugar.  My recipe for this shake has no sugar (only that from whole fruit), and does not contain ice cream, rather, frozen bananas and ice.  It’s truly delicious and a treat I don’t feel the least bit guilty about enjoying!