Ditch the Banana

The other day, I came across a raspberry smoothie recipe on Pinterest that proudly proclaimed it was made without bananas. 

This instantly caught my attention, because it seems that every smoothie recipe calls for a banana to add texture and sweetness. The only problem is that it imbues the entire thing with a cloying banana flavor, even when other ingredients - peanut butter, cacao nibs - are used to try and cover it. 

Sure enough, the smoothie was a treat, conveying raspberry’s natural tartness in a way that would have been impossible with that banana flavor. 

On the one hand, this brought to mind the work culture of “but we’ve always done it this way.”

Why does it seem like every smoothie recipe I’ve read for the last ten years was made this way? 

But on a more practical level, it seemed like an example of people following the crowd. 

Food bloggers were publishing smoothie recipes but feared they wouldn’t be taken seriously if theirs did not contain the much-treasured banana base. 

That’s certainly one theory. 

Either way, there’s power in ditching the banana, or of finding new ways to do things, and enjoying whatever new flavors that might entail.