Fiber One Cereal and Banana Smoothie

I came up with this recipe accidentally. When my son was around 24 months, I wanted to give him cereal for breakfast. My husband and I eat the Fiber One, Honey Cluster cereals. It tastes too good for a fiber cereal, with 13 gms of fiber per cup serving. I also wanted my son to start with that one itself right from the beginning, instead of starting with the regular sugary cereals and then trying to move on to the healthy stuff. So one fine day morning, I put little cereal, milk and couple of slices of banana. He started eating it, but he was having trouble with chewing the honey clusters. I panicked that he might choke on that.  I neither wanted to eat it myself nor throw it away, so I put the entire contents of the bowl in the blender and made it like a smoothie.Wow! It was DELICIOUS. The sugar in the bananas and the cereal gave the perfect amount of sweetness to the smoothie. The cereal although powdered nicely gave a crunch and the smoothness of the banana together gave a nice texture to the drink. I gave it to my son in a cup with a fancy straw and he just gulped it. From then onwards it's his favorite breakfast. Then I started modifying the basic recipe, by adding dates, almonds, apples, flax seed meal etc. In any case you need not add sugar at all. If the fruits are not sweet enough just add a teaspoon of honey it should be fine.After reading Mansi's definition of a balanced meal only it struck me that I was covering all the food groups in this one smoothie. Actually this smoothie is light yet satisfying. It can be enjoyed by adults and children as well. I tried it with the All Bran variety of Fiber One cereals too. That cereal has 14 gms of fiber in ½ cup. But it did not taste as good as the Honey Clusters one.

Ingredients:
Banana - 1 small or ¾th of a large banana
Fiber One Cereal (Honey Clusters) - ¼ cup
Milk - 1.5 to 2 cups (depending on the consistency you want the smoothie to be)
Almonds - 1 tablespoon (slivered)
Flax seed meal - ½ teaspoon (This one is optional. I add flax seed meal in anything and everything. Being vegetarian the sources of getting Omega-3 is restricted to flax seed meal and walnuts. So I sprinkle it in all my dishes including cereal, salad, curries, and soups and even in my chapathi dough.)

Procedure:
1. In a blender first add the cereal and almonds and powder it.
2. Then add the sliced bananas and milk and blend it smooth.

My Notes:
1. You can add the flax seed meal while powdering the cereal itself or just sprinkle it after blending the smoothie.
2. If you want to add dates, just soak it in warm milk for a couple of minutes and then blend it.
3. This smoothie is stomach filling by itself.

This is my entry to Mansi's WBB#20 - Balanced Breakfast. 

Update:
1. I use 2% milk for this smoothie. The organic milk's taste is better than the regular. I have tried it with fat free milk also, but I didn't like it.