red, white, and blue fruit salad

This red, white, and blue fruit salad is a colorful, festive, and fun treat. Featuring fresh strawberries, pineapple, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and watermelon, it’s the perfect dish to bring to Memorial Day and Fourth of July parties, spring and summer barbecues, or to snack on at home.

Some of my other favorite summer barbecue, Memorial Day and Fourth of July recipes include beer marinated steak fajitas, beer brats two ways, grilled baby back ribs, pimento cheese deviled eggs, bacon jalapeno pimento cheese, patriotic pina coladas, watermelon frose, and a raspberry gin seltzer. Cheers!

This post has been compensated by Collective Bias.

I’ve been doing Crossfit for a little over a year and a half now.

We joined our gym after a summer of over indulgence and because AJ said we needed a better exercise routine (plus he Googled the closest Crossfit gym to our house and it’s just five minutes away).

To be completely straight up; I didn’t think I was going to like Crossfit. I was intimidated; by the movements and by the people (it didn’t help I read a bunch of things about Crossfit’s cult like following before my first class).

Though I will always refuse to call our gym a “box,” I’m happy to say I was wrong about Crossfit and I really like it. (I even don’t mind getting up at 5:30 AM for workouts…what am I doing with my life?)

One of the things I like about Crossfit (there are a lot of things that I could go on a tangent about but I won’t) is that our gym provides other programming and support beyond encouraging us to lift heavy stuff.

After what I like to call “too much pizza in January” (but really, is there such a thing?) I decided to sign up for the nutrition program to get my eating back on track. Working with my coach, Buffy, over the past few months has been awesome; she’s super knowledgable, helpful and encouraging.

By listening to her tips and following her advice in my first month I lost three percent body fat and several inches around my waist.

One of Buffy’s tips that I tried really hard to follow was to drink more water.

Drinking water has always been hard for me; I’ve always preferred a flavored beverage to water’s flavorless taste. I learned that I should be drinking wayyy more water than I have been on a daily basis, so over the past few months, my goal has been to drink 100 ounces of water a day.

What’s really helped me reach my daily water goal (besides logging my water on an app like it’s a game, ha!) is DASANI® Sparkling.

There’s something about the bubbles in sparkling water that makes me want to drink it, and I can’t get enough of DASANI’s bright, fruity flavors.

DASANI Sparkling slim cans are also super convenient; their size makes them perfect to stock in the fridge and then grab them when I need them.

(I definitely throw a couple DASANI Sparkling cans in my work bag on my way out the door and pack one in my lunch box too).

While I love the DASANI Sparkling traditional flavors (Tropical Pineapple is my favorite!) they recently released three new flavors (Strawberry Guava, White Peach, and Blood Orange) too.

I was recently inspired by the new Strawberry Guava (it’s delicious!) to make a healthy, festive snack: red, white, and blue fruit salad.

After all, we do have two patriotic holidays just around the corner!

What fruit should I include in a red, white and blue fruit salad?

This red, white and blue fruit salad features one of my favorite ingredients (that is in season in the Carolinas right now!): strawberries.

Other red fruits that I love to put in this patriotic fruit salad are watermelon and raspberries. A chopped up red apple would also be a nice touch. Or some red grapes. 

For the blues of the fruit salad, I always include both blueberries and blackberries.

And round everything off with some juicy pineapple, cut into fun, festive shapes using a small cookie cutter. Other good “white” fruits could be honeydew melon, apples, or bananas!

How to make the honey citrus salad dressing

Don’t feel like adding salad dressing to a fruit salad? No problem!

This red, white and blue fruit salad would be perfect on it’s own, but I love adding a really easy and delicious honey citrus dressing to add an extra layer of flavor and amp up the fruit’s natural sweetness just a little bit.

Honey citrus dressing is so easy to make…just honey and orange juice whisked together.

Drizzle overtop the salad just before serving.

Yum!

This patriotic fruit salad is a great healthy dessert 

Red, white, and blue fruit salad is a great healthy alternative to bring to summer barbecues rather than pies, cakes, pudding, or cookies.

Fruit totally balances out burgers, brats, barbecue ribs, and hot dogs that we love to chow down on at summer cookouts. 

Plus it’s pretty, and will add a pop of color and patriotic spirit to your spread.

Red, white, and blue fruit salad is also great to make as a snack just because; I made a big batch for us last weekend and we’ve been eating it for breakfast and lunch on repeat this week.

And we’re washing our red, white, and blue fruit salad down with DASANI Sparkling Strawberry Guava and Tropical Pineapple, of course. Gotta reach my water goal!

If you’re looking for more spring inspiration, you can find it with DASANI here. 

PIN RED, WHITE, AND BLUE FRUIT SALAD TO SAVE FOR LATER!