Ten Fruit Smoothie

Yesterday I went to Krogers with my friend Hilina to buy fruit. It felt like Noah's ark, because we got two of everything in the fruit stands: oranges, bananas, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, kiwis, mangos, limes, and avacadoes (which isn't a fruit but it really wants to be). We had pineapple juice at home, which makes the 10th fruit.

Then last night, Hilina took all of these colorful foods and cut them up - you wash the blueberries and raspberries off, peel and slice the oranges, peel and dice the bananas, cut strawberries in half, peel and cut the kiwi into quarters, peel and dice the mango, cut the lime in half (squeeze juice over finished product), and cut, pit, and scoop out the avacado. The kitchen smelled so sweet and we all got sticky by tasting "the scraps" and licking the juice off our fingers.

Roshni claimed she didn't like kiwi or avacado or blueberries and wanted Hilina to leave them out. "But then it wouldn't be TEN fruit smoothie," I tried to reason, but six-year-olds rarely change their minds based on reason. Crafty manipulation seems to be much more effective. So I said, "Well that's fine, she can make you the boring kind and then she can add all the best stuff in for us to enjoy. It's probably best this way, so we don't have to share with you. Hilina, whatever you do, don't let Roshni have our special fruits!" And of course, this caused Roshni to want more than anything to try our "special fruits," and of course, she loved them, much to my mock dismay.

After all the slicing, dicing and scooping (in the case of our poor odd-ball avacado), Hilina started to fill the blender. Roshni thought the blender was too noisy, but I was actually quite impressed with how much power it had, to churn through such a variety of texture. There was so much fruit that Hilina couldn't fit it all in at once, so she blended down half the ingredients and slowly added more until the blender was completely full of mushy juice... or juicy mush...

I don't have a picture of the final product because, frankly, it isn't beautiful. It would never get a prize for being Aesthetically Pleasing. Looks a bit like mushy peas baby food. (Thank you, avacado!) But my goodness, is it delicious! And it's super-healthy too... no added sweetners, just pure fruit juice. I like to eat/drink mine slowly with a spoon, because if I concentrate, I can taste each fruit flavor and how they all work together and compliment each other.
I wrote a "Fruit of the Spirit" Bible study series a few years ago, comparing the qualities in Galatians to actual fruits. I think it might be really fun to adapt the fruitiness of it to match the ingredients for Ten Fruit Smoothie. Yes, there are ten fruits, and only nine fruit of the Spirit, but the lime twist could just be a fun addition. It would make a great object lesson... Hmmmm... nothing like fruit to get my creative Bible study juices flowing...