You may have heard me say this before. Americans routinely toss out 25 percent of their food! Can you believe it? A good portion of that waste can be attributed to produce that goes bad before it can be used. Here are three recipe ideas that you can use to use up overripe fruit instead of tossing it out.
There are other ways we waster food. We just tossed a huge bag of chocolate chips (my kids will eat whole wheat and flax as long as it has chocolate chips in it) because of our recent mouse problems. Boy did that get me angry. Of course that has nothing to do with overripe fruit, but I just had to mention it.
Bananas
Making banana bread is pretty easy to do. It is just a matter of combining the bananas with a bit of vanilla, eggs, butter, flour, salt and baking powder. If you don’t have enough bananas, try substituting some apple sauce to make up the difference (about half a cup per missing banana). The apple sauce makes the banana bread very moist.
Apples
If you apples are getting a bit shriveled or even bruised, don’t toss them out. They can be turned into apple sauce, baked apples or apple cobbler. Throw them in the crockpot; it is so easy. If you aren’t squeamish, you can even turn a half eaten apple into a cobbler by cutting it off of the core and zapping it in the microwave with some butter and brown sugar.
Oranges
If your oranges are too shriveled and tough to eat, squeeze out the juice. It will still be sweet. If you don’t have enough oranges to make a decent glass of juice, use whatever juice you can get to flavor your cooking, from cookies to chicken.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here or subscribe to the blog using the subscription box on the right.
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