Friday, May 18, 2012

What to do with Leftover Fruit from School

So at our school everyday our students don't eat about a case of fruit everyday.  The district tells our school to get rid of all unused food (throw it away), but our intrepid custodian/lunch attendant puts the fruit in the teacher's lounge for teachers to much on.  Sometimes there's a lot of fruit, sometimes not much, but most times the fruit sits in the lounge until it starts to go bad. 

When I see that fruit just going to waste my heart just about breaks.  Earlier in the year I dehydrated some kiwi fruit (yummy but left a weird residue on the back of my throat) and I have taken oranges to juice.  At the end of the week today there were about 20 oranges, 40 kiwis, 30 bananas and 50 gala apples.  I couldn't let them go to waste.

These fruits aren't organic and don't have a ton of flavor, but I don't want to waste them either.  So here's my plan for the fruit, if you have other ideas, I would love to hear them.

1.  Freeze the bananas-I have a smoothie every day for breakfast and bananas give just the right hint of sweetness.
2.  Juice the oranges-last weekend we also got some Meyer lemons and grapefruit that I can juice as well.  Depending on the yield, I will either freeze the juice or leave it in the fridge.
3.  Make apple sauce-the apples don't have a ton of flavor so I will add some of the lemon juice and some spices to make it more tasty.  Depending on the yield I will either keep it in the fridge or can some of it.
4.  I am not sure what to do with the kiwis.  They tasted good dehydrated, so I may go there again.  I am not sure if they can be preserved in other ways.

What do you do with a bumper crop of sub-par fruit? 

2 comments:

  1. Compost maybe? I wonder if the kiwis would make a good jam or not.

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  2. I ended up just eating the kiwis. I have never tried kiwi jam, that's a good idea though!!

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