The freezer is our friend and helps us make the most of our Raw Food Hub Produce Box each week while reducing waste and making meal prep feel easier. We'd love to see photos of your freezer and all of your tips for saving your produce on Facebook!
In Part 1 we're sharing our freezer tips for vegetables and bread, in today's blog it's all about fruit, smoothies and treats, and in Part 3 we're stewing fruit and making crumble.
SOFTER FRUITS such as berries, dragon fruit, and melon, freeze really well in containers. After washing and drying on a clean tea towel. Once frozen most fruits taste best blended as freezing changes the texture, while the taste and nutrition remain perfect!
A special mention goes to grapes because they are an exception to this rule and taste wonderful straight from the freezer. They are a favourite snack of ours, and taste like iced lollies.
BANANAS are staples in our house, simply peeled and frozen whole in containers, to make morning smoothies and nice cream a breeze. For extra special afternoon treats, we slice bananas and dip in melted chocolate, yoghurt, desiccated coconut or nut butter, then freeze on a baking paper-lined plate, yum!
When we have a busy week coming up, we love to Meal Prep SMOOTHIE PACKETS.
For each serving, we'll add the following to a container or reusable clip lock bag:
a banana plus another piece of fruit or berries
some greens, avocado, cucumber or zucchini
a spoon of nut butter such as peanut, almond or sunflower for #treenutfree
EXTRAS a sprinkle of cinnamon, pinch of salt or squeeze of lemon or lime
OPTIONAL a scoop of Protein Powder such as Whey, Collagen or Plant-Based
LIQUID bases you could use include coconut water, juice, yoghurt or milk such as dairy, coconut, soy, macadamia, cashew or oat
In the morning, add everything to the blender with enough liquid to create the texture you like. We love to make ours thick like ice cream to serve in a smoothie bowl. Leaving everything to defrost for a few minutes makes it easier on the blender. The smoothie above is dragonfruit, banana and coconut milk with frozen grapes. Toppings make it feel like a cafe morning and some ideas to try are sliced fruit, nut butter, a sprinkle of nuts, coconut, granola or seeds. We'd love to see yours on Facebook!
To reduce waste, we save some liquid to add to the blender after we scrape it out, then blend to get the last bits (but licking the bowl works too!), and whenever we end up with Extra Smoothie, we make ICY POLES. They are perfect for the kids and we love to have inexpensive moulds ready to go.
If we have anything left at the end of the week such as speckled bananas, pumpkin, apples, pears, sweet potato or avocado, we'll bake them into TREATS to freeze, such as pumpkin scones, sweet potato brownies, carrot cake cookies, banana cake and chocolate zucchini slice with chocolate avocado icing.
Baking MUFFINS like these banana almond meal goodies are a great way to batch cook and freeze extra fruit and eggs. Savoury muffins are delicious too for using herbs and veggies like zucchini, onion, carrot, corn and capsicum. Frozen treats like these are perfect for lunchboxes as by recess or lunchtime time they will be defrosted and taste great!
So these are our top sweet treats freezer tips and we'd love to see your favourite ways to hold onto Summer in your kitchen. Next week we'll be sharing our final Freezer Tips blog post on stewing fruits with a recipe for Stewed Plum and Apple Crumble.
We absolutely love seeing your recipes and meal prep ideas through the week, photos, videos, unboxings and seeing what your family loves most too! Post them on Facebook and if you are thinking about signing up for a Subscription Organic Produce Box, find out more at www.rawfoodhub.com.
Hi I'm Izennah, a Graphic Designer, Health and Nutrition Coach. Lifelong allergies and endometriosis lit my passion for Allergy Living and Simply Natural Food, Home and Products. If you are a small business, I'd absolutely love to work with you to create Social Media content, Photography and Design. See my work at izennah.com, email me at izennahhogan@gmail.com or join me on Facebook and Instagram.