#teenprogram

Healthy Unicorn Smoothies on a Budget

As part of a summer program series titled “Wellness Wednesday,” I made a healthy version of Starbucks’ “Unicorn Frappaccino” with some library teens tonight, & it turned out to be excellent! The smoothies were delicious, easy, & reasonably priced, so I thought that I would take the time to share...

Initially, I was inspired by recipes such as this one, from The Chic Life: http://thechiclife.com/2017/04/healthy-unicorn-smoothie-recipe.html 

However, as I began to explore the total cost of ingredients such as blue matcha powder & dragon fruit, I quickly realized that I was going to have to get creative, if I wanted to serve crowds of teens on my library’s beyond tight programming budget.

In the end, I spent less than $20, & served tall glasses to more than 30 teens! 

Here’s how:

Ingredients/Supplies:

- 1 package (14 oz) of frozen blackberry pulp (or, any blue/purple fruit)

- 4 packages (14 oz each) of frozen guava pulp (or, any pink/red fruit)

- 25 bananas, chopped & frozen the night before the program

- 1 cup of honey roasted peanut butter

- water (or, almond milk)

- Optional: freeze dried fruit to sprinkle on top

- 2 blenders (1 for each mixture)

- Plastic cups (1/smoothie)

- Spoons

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Purple swirl =

- 7 oz of frozen blackberry pulp blended with 1 cup of honey roasted peanut butter. (1 batch of this thick mixture lasted through 4 batches of the thin, pink mixture).

Pink smoothie =

- 14 oz of frozen guava pulp blended with 3 cups of frozen chopped banana. Add water or, almond milk to desired texture. (x4, if you want to serve ~30 teens).

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Process:

First, make the purple mixture. Then, start working on the pink batches, while the purple mixture gets passed around.

While working on the pink batches, the teens used the backs of spoons to “paint” purple swirls onto the edges of the clear cups. Some of them experimented with different designs, which made for a more creative environment than that of your usual recipe-following program. 

Then, I poured the pink mixture into the middles of the cups, as the batches were ready. 

With a higher budget, I would have purchased freeze dried fruit, to use as sprinkles, & maybe some paper crazy straws, but ultimately, everyone seemed satisfied. 

Today I got to know my fellow pioneers through an interesting welcome activity led by Aurelie an expert on archival symbols. We started by choosing from a collection of scrap images solely based off of which ones we were drawn too. We then assembled and collages and met with Aurelie one on one to analyze our collages for symbols. The symbols I found in my collage gave me great insight into parts of my unconscious that I hadn’t yet explored. We will now explore one symbol from our collage for the rest of the week.