Freezing Your Fruit

We love to have fresh fruit in the house, but sometimes we just don't eat it as quickly as we should, and then we end up with fruit in the compost pile instead of in our bellies. Freezing fruit when it looks like we can't eat it all has been a huge saver of flavor, nutrition, and money!

Grapes
Put washed grapes plucked from their stems in snack sized zipper bags and then pile the little bags into a gallon freezer bag and freeze. When you are in the mood for a popsicle, pull one of those bags out of the freezer and enjoy all natural, nutrition packed, bite size grape "popsicles"! These are delicious, refreshing, and a great way to cash in when grapes are on sale. We just bought 8 pounds of grapes on sale for $1.08/lb and froze two gallon bags of these! S is very happy!

Bananas
Mash the brown skinned bananas and freeze in 1 cup portions to use in banana bread recipes later. To use, just thaw and use as usual. For not-so-ripe bananas, cut into chunks and freeze one banana per baggie, then use two bananas, 1/2 cup of milk/soy milk, and a generous squeeze of chocolate syrup and blend in a blender until smooth for a barely banana mostly chocolate "milk"shake.

Strawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, Peaches, Nectarines, Plums, any soft fruit:
Cut fruit into chunks and freeze either in portion sizes or by spreading on a piece of wax paper on a cutting board (flash freezing) then bagging the chunks. Use the chunks to make healthy and delicious smoothies.

Apples, or any fruit for pie really:
Mix up your pie filling but pour into a gallon bag instead of into a pie crust, then when you want pie, prepare the pie crust, and put a bag's worth of frozen or thawed filling in and bake.

Watermelon:
Make sorbet (and I've done this with honeydew melon too)!
1 c. sugar
1 c. water
8 c. cubed, seedless watermelon
2 T. lemon juice (this helps to keep the color bright)
In a small saucepan, bring water and sugar to a boil. Cook and stir until sugar is dissolved, then remove from heat and set aside to cool.
In a blender or food processor, process watermelon until pureed but not liquefied (keep an eye on it!).
Two choices for the next step: You can mix all ingredients together in a gallon bag, squeeze out air, zip shut, then lay flat to freeze, or you can mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and pour into a 9x13x2 pan and freeze.
Freeze until firm, then break into chunks and process in a food processor in batches until fluffy and smooth.
Serve immediately or place the sorbet into a freezer container to scoop out later. If you want it fluffy again, just scoop out the more crystallized refrozen sorbet and take it for a spin in a food processor!