DIY: Frozen Smoothie Packets
We have a love for smoothies at our house. If you say, “Jamba Juice,” it doesn’t take long for us to load into the car on a Saturday morning. However it can be expensive and like I’ve said before, I am a self proclaimed penny pincher.
Recently my son asked me to purchase a frozen Dole Smoothie packet while we were shopping at the grocery store. When we opened it up at home the next morning and I read the directions, I thought, “ I could make this myself.” Although I will admit it was yummy, it just didn’t go that far with four smoothie loving boys sitting around the kitchen table. So I set out to make my homemade version and found out that a lot of other people have had the same idea.
Making smoothies at home is a great way to use up fruit sitting in the fridge. Bananas that a slightly past the stage a eating fresh are great frozen and tossed into the blender to add an icy sweetness to breakfast. Something about blending your own tasty concoctions out of fruit, yogurt, milk, juices and ice is interestingly satisfying and fun.
Here is what we came up with as a rule of thumb for smoothie making.
1/3 Yogurt
2/3 Fruit
1 Cup Liquid ( like Milk or Juice)
Ice (optional if your fruit isn’t frozen)
Drizzle of honey or tsp of sugar if you prefer it to be sweeter.
To make it easy for my kiddos to make their own breakfast, I made some my own frozen smoothie packets. I purchased blueberries and blackberries on sale and froze them on my own, along with some slightly ripened bananas that were sitting on my counter. I also purchased a bag of frozen strawberries so we could make it a mixed berry smoothie and to add some color.
Just a couple of notes about pre freezing your fruit and yogurt. Slice fruit and place it on a wax paper lined baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap before placing it in the freezer. Place in the freezer for a couple of hours prior to assembling smoothie packets. It is easy to add frozen yogurt to your packets if you freeze small amounts ahead of time in ice cube trays or mini muffin tins. Let the yogurt sit on the counter for a couple mins after it has been frozen and it will easily come out of it’s container.
Assembly Instructions:
In each small freezer bag place
1/4 cup sliced bananas
1/2 cup mixed frozen berries
1/4 cup frozen yogurt
Date and place in freezer. To prepare smoothie empty contents into blender with 1 cup milk or juice and blend until mixed well and enjoy.
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Recipe: Homemade Meatballs
Tuesday I picked up my 40 lb box of ground beef from Zaycon and needed to prep it. One of my favorite things to have ready in the freezer are homemade meatballs. I don’t particularly like making them, but I love having them all ready for meals. So I just remind myself of that. I made and froze 208 meatballs!! Holy cow.
Here is how I like to do homemade meatballs!
HOMEMADE MEATBALLS
1 1/2 lbs lean hamburger
3/4 cup quick oats
1 egg
1/4 cup finely diced onion
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground pepper (use another teaspoon of pepper if you love pepper flavor)
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp ketchup
1 Tbsp dry parsley
Put all ingredients into a large bowl (I love using glass bowls as they clean easily from all the germs from raw meat).
Mix all together WELL. Use your hands to make sure it is well-incorporated. Make sure you take any rings off. 🙂 It will look like this:
Now, form the meat mixture into balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with foil (it makes clean up a breeze! Bake at 400 for about 18 minutes, shaking or stirring occasionally.
When they are done cooking, they look like this, and smell soooo good!
Then what I like to do is freeze them. I have a Foodsaver which is fantastic. It is totally worth the investment if you like to freeze foods. It really does help keep foods fresher longer! All the air is sucked out so there will be no freezer burn. Here are all the meatballs I froze yesterday.
I also cooked about 10 lbs into regular ground beef to use later in recipes. I froze that in Foodsaver bags too. After cooking 20 pounds of meat today, I still have 20 more pounds to cook up. Wish me luck!
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