Friday, December 6, 2013

Homemade Fruit Smoothies in a mason jar... (and tetrazzini leftovers, too)

Today was an extra long day in the office so we are having leftover leftovers plus making a big batch of smoothies. The smoothies should cover us for 2 or 3 weeks. Its December and cold and I have to be creative to get fruit in hubby's tummy. Smoothies will get this done. Plus it is the only way to get yogurt in him and I think he needs the probiotics.
I am also determined to NOT buy a blender because I feel I can make my KitchenAid Mixer fit every need. Except food processor.  I am struggling with that. Kitchenaid can't chop my onions. Yet. 
But with the homesteader mindset, I can't just run out will-nilly and buy something. I have to try to make do with what I have. (I wish I started homesteading after I purchased a blender/food processor)
For dinner, we are having leftover tetrazinni. The tetrazzini turned out a-amazing. We followed a recipe from The Pioneer Woman and it was great! Perfect use for leftover Thanksgiving turkey. We also had some left over tetrazzini so today I fried it up, added 3 eggs and fried it some more. ( don't forget to save your eggshells for dog food ).
On to the smoothies. In summer we use fresh fruit. Now that its winter I should be using my canned fruit but I didn't can enough for this volume so we are using frozen fruit (sigh). We used:

2 large bags of frozen mixed fruit including strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and bananas. You can use whatever you like.
2 24 oz containers of plain Greek yogurt. (you could make your own here)
1 cup chia seeds.
3/4 cup honey.

I ran the fruit through my Kitchenaid Meat Grinder Attachment accessory. Yep. Meat grinder. The attachment came with a meat grinder and a fruit strainer. I love the fruit strainer and use it often. Normally I would take fresh fruit and smash it all through the strainer because it gets all the seeds and leaves and pits out. But it's also a pain to get the little raspberry seeds out at cleaning time and the frozen fruit is clean so I gave the meet grinder a try and it was perfect. Grinding the fruit and hand mixing it with everything else eliminated need for a blender. Yay!
So like I said, take your ground fruit and mix in remaining ingredients. This pretty much filled my 5 1/2 quart mixing bowl.
Now you can plop it into mason jars. I used half pints because that's what I had on hand today. If you leave a good inch of headspace, then you can put them in the freezer which allows for you to stretch this out to last for a few weeks. Take a jar out night before and put it in the fridge and then you have a healthy breakfast to grab on the way to work.
This quantity filled a dozen half pints and also a few cup sized plastic containers that we used because we ran out of jars.
Fruit Smoothies in jars (and containers) and ready to freeze.
Turkey Tetrazzini, refried. Yum!
Fruit going through the meat grinder~
Add remaining ingredients to the fruit~
Smoothies smoothed out and waiting to jar~

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