Frugal Fruit

If you are like me you buy fruit with the good intentions of eating it all, but then the inevitable happens. The apples and bananas get puched to the back of the fridge never to be seen until it looks like this:

But don’t fret it doesn’t have to go to waste. Think about cooking with it. Be thrifty and save your overripe fruit for recipes. Think applesauce, apple pie, preserves, breads, muffins. Be creative and save the money that you used to buy that fruit. This also works for veggies too. You can use veggies for soups, casseroles, and more. As long as your cooking it you will really never notice the difference. Or if you don’t use onions or mushrooms or herbs very often but like to have them for certain recipes, freeze them.

The other day when I cleaned out the fridge for the food from my big grocery shopping trip I found a full bag of pears and an almost full bunch of bananas. So I set them aside and planned on cooking with them. Actually I saved them for a few days later when I had some extra time and even had to call on the day my MIL was over to make sure no one threw away my fruit.

We made Sour Cream Banana Bread and Muffins. I like making my banana bread into muffins, that way I can control portions better and they are easier to serve. I chose the Sour Cream Banana Bread because I wanted to use up some sour cream I had bought that was full fat when I thought I was buying low fat.

Cooking is a great way to spend time with your kids too. Zane loves cooking and helping. And we use it as a learning experience. He helps me count out the scoops and eggs. And this time we worked on his letters by pointing them out on the ingredient labels. You can following along as we cook:

Mash the bananas with a potato masher. Measure how much you have (we had 2 Cups so I doubled the recipe)

Grease your pan and/or fill your muffin cups with papers. This is a great job for little hands!

Cream together Eggs, V for Vanilla, Sugar (I only had brown sugar), and margarine.

Even Zaney got to try, with help, to use the beater.

Add all the dry ingredients.

Add sour cream and mashed bananas.

Lick the beaters (of course!) Look Zaney can stick out his tongue!

Fill your pan and muffin papers 2/3 full.

Take some time and do your lessons while you wait for your bread/muffins to cook!

Don’t they look yummy?

I cooked the muffins for 16 minutes, I think they needed a couple more minutes, but that is okay. I got 1 loaf of bread and 2 dozen muffins and 1 dozen of the muffins went in the freezer.

With the pears I decided to make Pear Sauce. This is the recipe I modified from another:

• Diced Pears (I had about 2 C worth)
• 1/2 C water
• 1/4 brown sugar
• 1/8 T Lime Juice
• 1/8 T Vanilla
• dash of Nutmeg
• dash of Cinnamon

I threw it all into a pot and just boiled it all down (I believe about 20-30 minutes). Mashed it with a potato masher and put in the fridge to cool. If you have a lot of pears you can also can this if you wanted.

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