How to Drink Ensure and Live to Tell About It

Okay, Ensure won't kill you but it is definitely not a pleasant drink on its own. You have to add delicious tasting ingredients to it to make the beverage drinkable.

I have been trying to include a serving of Ensure every day or two to help with weight gain and as a nutrition boost. At first I was buying the regular Ensure but have now upgraded to the 'muscle health' mix. The problem with Ensure is that I find the smell of it quite disgusting and cannot conceive of drinking a bottle of this stuff straight up. I have to blend it with other ingredients to get rid of the smell and aftertaste. My usual blend has been a dark chocolate Ensure, some vanilla ice cream and a scoop of vanilla or chocolate protein powder. This makes a nice tall smoothie that is very palatable. Today I swapped the ice cream out for a frozen banana. This turned out to be quite delicious. I messed up on the frozen banana though. I had thrown a well-ripened banana into the freezer leaving the skin on. This is not a good idea. The banana was rock hard and the skin will not peel off this way. I had to get out my vegetable peeler and peel the dang thing like a potato. Obviously, I have much to learn about making smoothies.

My day was full and included another 4-mile walk,  a trip for groceries, more reading, and another wrestling meet this evening.Unfortunately, it was another heartbreaking loss for our school. Sigh. I haven't started crocheting yet, but I did open up the book and read through the first couple of introduction chapters. Nothing new there. Tomorrow I should be working through the beginning stitches and a pattern or two if I can sit down for an hour or so with it.