Rainbow Fruit Smoothies

I finally got around to out 1st of March, welcome spring (keep your fingers crossed), rainbow, fruit smoothies at lunchtime, today. Yes, I do realize that's probably a run-on sentence. That actually makes it the perfect sort of sentence for expressing how I feel about the 1st of March, this year. We have so many fun and educational things going on, and crashing into each other all at once, that I hardly know which to post about first.

The smoothies aren't exactly educational, but they were simple, so I'll start with the smoothies.

Last year, I made the children rainbow slushies...


...from smashed up freezer pops.


They were a big hit, but a lot of sugar. This year, I decided to start out with fruit - fruit's healthy right?


It's also harder to come by, in great abundance, in our neck of the woods at this time of year. So, I went with a combination of frozen, canned, and fresh, to gather all the colors of the rainbow, ending up with blackberries for purple, blueberries for blue, kiwi for green, pineapple for yellow, peaches for orange, and strawberries for red. I dumped out the canned fruit, and peeled the fresh, and froze all of it overnight, in seperate containers. Then, I let it thaw part way today...

...before blending it up, and layering it into glasses. I didn't get any pictures of the blending process, but you've all seen smoothies in a blender before, right?

Anyway, I worked on one fruit at a time, rinsing the blender, and sticking the glasses into the refrigerator after each layer. I added about a cup of milk, 2 tablespoons of heavy cream, and two tablespoons of sugar for every 2-3 cups of fruit - lowering the health factor somewhat, but greatly increasing the likelihood the children would drink the smoothies.

I also added a few drops of food coloring to the blender for each layer, except for the purple, to make the colors pop a little more. It wasn't totally necessary, but it kept our colors from being completely pastel. Other than that, it was just spoon...


...serve...


...and enjoy.

It's great to be a homeschooler.