Creating an excerpt without images

Looking to create an excerpt from a specific category. However, the code is pulling the image code from the post instead of the plain text. I want to filter out all html tags and just get plain text. Must be missing something simple.

Code is as follows:

<?php 

$latestPosts = new WP_Query();

$args = array('post_type' => 'post', 'order' => 'DESC', 'posts_per_page' => 1, 'cat' => '11' );

							$latestPosts->query($args);	 

						?>
          <?php foreach($latestPosts->posts as $blogPost): ?>
          <?php $authorInfo = get_userdata($blogPost->post_author); ?>
          <p> <strong><?php echo $blogPost->post_title; ?></strong><br/>
            <?php echo date('F d, Y', strtotime($blogPost->post_date)); ?> | POSTED BY <?php echo $authorInfo->user_login; ?> <?php echo strip_tags(substr($blogPost->post_content, 0, 110)); ?><br />
            <a href="<?php echo get_permalink($blogPost->ID); ?>">read more...</a> </p>
          <?php endforeach; ?>