Category: Freezing

Anytime is smoothie time but the summer is the best time to take advantage of available abundant fruit (unless you live in the tropics where fresh fruit is available all year). If I want to make smoothies with fruit, I need to plan ahead. I like to use frozen fruit in my smoothies (instead of just ice). If I freeze it myself, I can put it into single serving size bags and I’ve chosen the quality of the fruit.

Apples

I can usually find fresh apples most of the year, but before harvest season in September or October, the apples have been stored someplace in a climate-controlled setting. Most other fruit we buy here in Pennsylvania from October to June has been grown somewhere else and shipped to our stores. When local fruit shows up at farmer’s markets and the grocery store, I know it’s time to start chopping!

Anytime I buy a bag of apples and we aren’t eating them fast enough, I take the time to chop them up in small pieces, put them in a snack-size zip bag and get them into the freezer.

This quart bag held 4 bags of diced apples. I can easily break off half the bag if I want to mix it with other fruit.

Blueberries

Every year the Kiwana’s in our area have a blueberry sale. The blueberries come from New Jersey (or maybe Maine?) and are very clean and delicious. A 10-lb box this year was $38 and I bought only one box…I still have blueberries in the freezer from last year. I wash them right away and put them into 1-quart zip bags. Once they are frozen, I can pour them out of the bag like marbles right into my blender or into a measuring cup if I need them to bake muffins, etc.

Bananas

I especially like bananas in my smoothies, and freezing them in slices makes it really easy. Bananas don’t keep very long on my counter top and always go bad before I can get to them.

When they are abundant in the store and I have time, I buy about 20 bananas…all about the same ripeness. Then I turn on my music and start chopping!

Since we compost the peals, I’ve learned to remove the stickers. Even when the peals decompose and turn to good dirt the stickers NEVER decompose!

Each snack bag holds exactly 10 slices, which is about 1/2 a banana. Perfect!

Ready for the freezer! I don’t even have label them…they look like banana slices when frozen!

Nectarines

I just took three nectarines that were not going to last on my counter and chopped them up.

These are ready for a smoothie…and I can use just half a bag if I like!

Making Smoothies

My smoothies start with about 8oz of Almond or Coconut milk. You could use regular milk or water. My choices for Protein Powder include:

Or a whey-based protein powder:

This brand is called “Clean Simple Eats.” Very tasty!

It even comes in many flavors! I haven’t tried them yet…but the vanilla is delicious!

Milk goes in the blender first. Then a scoop of protein powder.

Then about 1 cup of frozen fruit.

Fruit goes on top of milk and powder.

About one minute in the blender and I have my “smoothie milk shake” for breakfast!

Prepping fruit for smoothies doesn’t take long but it sure makes my morning much easier to get going! Don’t let any fruit go to waste…get it in the freezer ready for smoothies! Enjoy!

Please email me directly if you have questions or comments: maryjkisner@gmail.com

One last blast about zucchini! Last week I had a full tray of zucchini and I was done experimenting with recipes. Time to pull out the food processor to shred and freeze the last big batch. My little hand-held shredder was fine for one or two zucchinis to make one recipe. Now I had a pile and the food processor could handle it quickly…it probably took longer to clean up the machine when I was done than it took to shred all the zucchinis!

I had more to choose from, but the two biggest zucchinis ended up being composted…the seeds were too big!

I first cut all the zucchini into smaller pieces.

The chunks had to fit into the hole at the top:

The food processor has a nice shredding blade.

It took only a few minutes to shred all the zucchini!

All done!

I scooped 2 cups of the shreds into each quart bag and flattened them out so they would stack in the freezer.

I now have 5 bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer ready for all those recipes I tried over the last month! Yay!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

You might think I’ve been sitting around this week after all the preparations for the Arts Festival last week! Haha! The garden produce waits for no one! When beans need to be picked…it needs to be NOW! With daytime temperatures this week of 95 degrees F. or more, I found myself out in the garden at 6 a.m.! It took a few days, an hour or so each day, to get them picked. Once the beans were in the refrigerator I spent time in front of the TV snapping them and getting them ready to freeze.

By the time I was ready to blanch and freeze them I had run out of room to store them in the refrigerator. That meant it was time!

First, they all needed to be snapped and any blemished beans were discarded. Because it hadn’t rained recently the beans were pretty clean. I guess even the slugs and bugs were not attracted to them…yet! Time to get them into the freezer.

This is my set up in front of my recliner in the living room. I can snap them and discard the ends in the smaller bowl right between my feet!

Next, I get my largest pan out and bring water to a boil, add the beans, bring it back to a boil and let them boil for 5 minutes.

Then I have a big bowl of water and ice ready and scoop all the beans into the cold water.

After a few minutes, the ice has melted and the beans are cool. I scoop them out with my hands into another bowl and fill quart zip bags with the beans. When I was finished with this batch, I had six one-quart bags filled with beans, ready for the freezer! They will be so good this winter.

It probably takes longer to pick the beans, snap them and get the pots ready than it does to actually blanch the beans and get them into the freezer. I think I’ll be doing another round soon as these first plants wind down. Luckily, we started two more rows of beans several weeks after the first planting so we should be able to eat fresh beans the rest of the summer! If you don’t grow them yourself, now is the time to look for them at the Farmer’s Markets. Enjoy!