Healthy Orange Julius Recipe

I know what you are thinking. The title says Orange Julius recipe, but there is a picture of a pumpkin.

Confused? So are we. This recipe was devised years ago when I didn’t want one of our pumpkins to go bad. I cooked it up,  put it in the blender, added some yogurt and vanilla to it.  When I drank it, it was the most delicious pumpkin smoothie I had ever tasted.  The only problem, if you could call it a problem, was it tasted like an Orange Julius. My husband thought maybe I had found out their “secret” ingredient.  I dubbed it my “Fake Orange Julius Recipe”.

My “orange julius” recipe came about because I hate to waste food. We grow pumpkins every year. Sometime in February, quite a few years ago, we had some fresh pumpkin that was going to go by if I didn’t use it. So, I cooked it up. “Now, what, ” I thought. I decided to through some into the blender. I added some vanilla yogurt, and then some vanilla extract and gave the blender a whirl. I tried the smoothie. “Wow, this is delicious”, I thought to myself. I called my husband in to see what he thought. “You’ve just recreated the Orange Julius recipe, ” he exclaimed.

I am not sure how combing the ingredients makes it taste like an Orange Julius, but it does. I call it my fake Orange Julius Smoothie Recipe.

This recipe is simple and has just 3 ingredients.

• 1 cup non-fat vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 cup pumpkin, canned or freshly cooked
• 1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract