Banana Split Breakfast

Yes, you heard right.  I had a banana split for breakfast.  And yes, you're right again... there is a catch lol.

Banana Split.  Unapologetically delicious, and dieter approved :)

Let me lay the groundwork: For breakfast, I am allowed egg whites, veggies, and 1 fruit of my choice.  For my AM snack, I am allowed 1 scoop of protein powder.  Now, I'm not sure I'm technically allowed to combine meals, but on the weekends my days are so much shorter than they are during the week (due to the fact that I sleep in a good 5 hours longer than usual) that often I end up eating two of my meals at the same time so I can "catch up".  And most often, those two meals end up being the first two of the day.

My friend Jess (of "The Montreal Veggie") introduced me to banana ice cream about a year ago and I haven't looked back since.  My boyfriend John is lactose-intolerant, and I try to watch what I eat even when I'm not dieting, so banana ice cream was (and apparently still is) a perfect solution to our ice cream cravings.

Here's what you do:
You know those bananas that have gone brown that you usually either throw away or freeze for baking?  But sometimes when you put you put them in the freezer, you forget about them for months??  Well take a couple of those suckers out of the freezer and let them thaw just enough so that their skins soften up again.  Peel said bananas.  Throw them into a blender, and puree until smooth (1-2 minutes, scraping the sides of the blender every once in a while).  And VOILA!  It's as easy as that!  I've gotten into the habit of pre-peeling my bananas before I freeze them, because I find the frozen peeling to be very, er, uncomfortable for my delicate fingers lol.  Honestly, you will NOT notice the difference between this and regular ice cream.  It even passed the boyfriend test (on several boyfriends, might I add).  And consider: 1 banana is about the equivalent of 1 serving of ice cream, but saves you at least 150 calories!!

But that's not all I did to this breakfast treat.  Oh no.  That was just step 1.  Step 2 was the topping!  I recently discovered that if you mix chocolate whey protein powder with some stevia and just a bit of water (as opposed to the usual 8oz), it has the same consistency and taste (well, to me anyways) as chocolate syrop.  So, I whipped up a batch of syrop, and drizzled this on top of my ice cream.

And there you have it.  A totally clean, but completely decadent Banana Split Breakfast.