One Way to Not Waste Fruit

I really dislike throwing food away. Who’s with me? I might as well flush money down the toilet. Cha-ching! Whoosh.

Not to mention all the people in this world who don’t have food to eat. We are very fortunate.

Now, generally speaking, we do pretty well with not wasting food. I’ve gotten better about estimating just how many fruits and veggies we will eat in-between grocery shopping trips. My goal is to shop once a week, but it’s more like every 5 days.

If we do end up with leftover fruit, my kids do enjoy fresh fruit smoothies. If we have leftover smoothies, those can be turned into popsicles.

But there always comes a time when your kids suddenly want nothing to do with smoothies. Do yours change on a dime like that too? Apples are their favorite fruit and then out-of-the-blue they don’t want apples anymore and oranges are their go-to fruit. Gah! Who can keep up?

One of the fruits that we seem to always have extra of are grapes. For some reason, no one in our household likes the ones that fall off the stem to the bottom of the bag. And if they get even a little bit squishy – forget about it. It finally dawned on me the other day that I don’t need to force smoothies all at once. Why don’t I just wash and FREEZE the grapes? DUH!

So that’s what I did. Sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake, people.

Every summer we pick and freeze peaches, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. Why did it take me so long to freeze grapes? Don’t answer that.

When you go to Jamba Juice or any other smoothie place, they are mainly using frozen fruit to make their smoothies. It can work for me too. No need to reinvent the wheel.

My only recommendation is to make sure the grapes are mainly dry before you stick them in the freezer bag. Otherwise, they could stick together.

Earlier this week, my son insisted that he wanted a banana for lunch and only a banana. “Yes, I can eat a whole banana, mama,” he said. I looked into those big, brown eyes and believed him too. Sucker.

An hour later there was still only one bite gone from that banana. So, what did I do? Broke the banana up in chunks and put it in the freezer next to the grapes. He doesn’t know it, but last night he ate that banana with his dinner in the form of a smoothie. Ha!

The only thing I notice when I’m using a lot of frozen fruit to make smoothies is that my blender needs some extra liquid to keep things running smoothly. I don’t have a blender that chops up iPhones and golfballs, but my Breville Blender does a pretty darn good job.

Every time I make a smoothie it always tastes different. There’s no right or wrong. It’s fun to experiment with different combinations. If it doesn’t taste quite right, add something different. Go wild, folks! Your happy little tastebuds will thank you for it!

P.S. This smoothie had approximately a cup of frozen grapes, a handful of frozen blueberries, one frozen banana in chunks, half of an apple with the skin on and orange juice.

Here are some other posts you might enjoy!

How I Get My Kids to Eat Fruit and Veggies (nope, not via smoothies)

How to Freeze Berries and Other Fruit

How I Accidentally Got My Kids Excited for College

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