The time is here for all your favorite fruits to ripen and hit your local farmer’s market fresh and full of flavor. Don’t always eat a whole basket of berries before they start to get slimy? Freeze them and use them later! Here is how:
- Wash fruit thoroughly. Peel, slice, cube and cut stems off fruit as needed.
- Lay out on counter to dry
- Place fruit on a cookie sheet making sure that they are not touching one another.
- Put in freezer until each piece is frozen
- Pull from freezer and put in a zip lock bag, mark the type of fruit and date on the bag, and put it back into the freezer for later use.
This freezing technique guarantees that when you pull the bag from the freezer, you won’t have a large frozen clump of fruit. You can pull out as many or as few individual pieces as you need. Use this technique on most any fruit. Keep frozen fruit for up to one year.
What do you do with frozen fruit? Make a fruit smoothie! This is a great way to get a variety of fruit and all the fiber and other nutrients into your child. Make it with yogurt for a calcium kick or without. Here is a basic smoothie recipe:
Fruit Smoothie – Makes around 2 – 8 ounce glasses
1 banana, peeled
1 cup frozen strawberries
1 cup orange juice
1 cup ice cubes
1/2 cup plain or fruit yogurt (optional)
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Add frozen blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, mango chunks or any other frozen fruit you like. Substitute any other citrus juice or 100 % juice combinations. Add any other fresh fruit you like, such as pineapple, pear, apple, nectarine, and/or peaches. This is a good way to use up fresh fruit that is ready to go to the compost pile.
