Happy Summer! Well, it won’t be official until the Summer Solstice on Friday, but I’m already thinking beach, barbeques and fresh fruit. No to the fresh fruit? How about strawberry short-cake? That’s one of my summertime favorites and it doesn’t taste the same without fresh, ultra-ripe strawberries. But this post has nothing to do with strawberries. Except that I need to find a gluten-free recipe to substitute the cake part. Hopefully I’ll post about that later.

Smoothies also remind me of summer. I’ve gotten a lot of hits on my Chocolate Gluten-Free smoothie so I decided to share a different version made with mangos and coconut milk. This smoothie is so creamy, it’s hard to believe it has no dairy. I used vanilla hemp powder instead of the chocolate, but beware, the powder is a little on the green side and it doesn’t disguise the hemp flavor as well as the chocolate version.

Ingredients:
3 tablespoon of oatmeal
1 tablespoon of flaxseed
3/4 cup vanilla coconut milk
1 banana
16 frozen mango pieces
water if needed
3 tablespoon vanilla hemp powder (the package calls for 4 tblspoons but my first try tasted a little heavy on the grains so I cut down on the oatmeal, flax and hemp that I used in the chocolate smoothie.)

I start with putting 3 tablespoons of oatmeal in the blender and blend because it’s not instant which dissolves better in the smoothie. I then add the flax-seed, banana and the cocoanut milk. Blend before you add the mangos. I take the clear part of the lid off and feed in the mangos. It doesn’t blend as well, not to mention it’s hard on the blender, if it has to blend everything at once. If the mangos are making the mixture to thick, add a little water. When everything is blended, sprinkle in the three tablespoons of vanilla hemp powder. Don’t dump it all in at once or it won’t blend well. Enjoy! This smoothie is great for a midmorning snack when your coffee buzz has worn off. It’s light but filling enough to keep you going without making you sleepy like a full meal.

And a few other things that remind me of summer is reading in a lounge chair by pool or surf, pirates and the Caribbean. In honor of my favorite time of year, I have The Pirate and the Puritan free until this Friday and .99 cents for the rest of the summer. My other pirate historical, The Pirate’s Jewel, will be available on Kindle early July. I hope to make it available before the 4th because the hero is a pirate turned privateer at the start of the American Revolution. Of course, he has a treasure to find, and the daughter of his arch-enemy to seduce before he can do any of the patriotic stuff.

Thanks to everyone who has been enjoying my books. My readers mean the world to me.