I mentioned early this week that I am working on revamping our schedules. While I am starting fresh, I am not starting from nothing. I have what worked for us in the past and I have a list of mental notes from other people. The smoothie hour is the product of one of those mental notes.
One of my Utah friends, Shannon, has a husband who is home later from work and she is tasked with keeping her young brood content until he can join them for supper. When we were visiting one afternoon right before we left, she told me that always had smoothies for afternoon snack. We have always had our daily smoothie with breakfast, but I thought to myself, “Hey! If we did it in the afternoon I wouldn’t have to always think about snack time and end up making big messes and resorting to things that I know aren’t the best snacks.”
And so the idea percolated for a few weeks while we moved and started resettling, but it stuck with me and I looked for ways to incorporate it into our daily routines. Not one to leave all the work for myself, I came up with a *recipe* and assigned each family member a day they are responsible for making the smoothie.
It has gotten to be quite the production… trying to trick your siblings into eating something they don’t like. Each day’s ingredients are kept top-secret by the chef until everyone has had a taste, and even then it is a guessing game. We’ve really only had one day that no one cared for and it was actually Tim that contributed the cherry lime concoction. Even Lucie has a day, although she can be quite mischievous and sometimes forgets to add a vegetable (or adds only vegetables) or accidentally adds some honey or chocolate chips!
We have spent a fair amount of time visiting with my parents and I saw my mom had these adorable glass bottles from some brand of apple juice she buys and I asked her to save them. They don’t really fit in my cupboard, but since they are used every day they are almost always in use, in the sink, or in the dishwasher so it works out ok. I have lids for them and a couple days we have had extra smoothie, we put it in the freezer for Tim to bring with to work the next day. No need to confine smoothie hour to only those folks at home, right?
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