I hope that everyone had a good long weekend and a happy Memorial Day! Memorial Day is often seen as the unofficial start of summer, and I for one can not wait until Summer! I am a heat person, so anything over 80 degrees is my ideal weather.
With the summer comes all of the beautiful fruits and veggies that are in season in the summer. One of my all time favorites is grapes. I LOVE grapes, especially green grapes. I would have to say that it is one of the fruits I could not live without. Along with the bounty of fruits and veggies, also comes the heat of summer.
Our instinct when we are hot is to reach for something cold to cool us off, whether it be a nice ice water or lemonade, or ice cream or a popsicle. The only bad thing about ice cream and popsicles, is that there is usually a ton of sugar and calories involved. Since we are trying to stay away from those things, one of my favorite things to do is freeze fruit! Not only do you get the satisfaction of the ice coldness that you are craving, but you also get the health benefits of the fact that you are straight up eating just fruit.
My all time favorite fruit, therefore, becomes my all time favorite popsicle! They are perfect little bite sized snacks. What I usually do is buy a bag of grapes a week, wash them, and pick them from their vines. I then put them in a Ziploc freezer bag and stick them in the freezer. Then they are there to put in a bowl any time I need them. They also become more satisfying than eating regular grapes because they are so cold, and you can only eat so many at a time.
Let's look at the nutrition facts for 1 cup of frozen green grapes vs. my favorite ice cream:
Frozen Grapes have 104 calories per cup (I usually only have about half a cup or even 1/4 of a cup), and 23 grams of natural sugar per cup.
My favorite ice cream is Ben and Jerry's Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch (drool). A serving size of this is 1/4 cup, but let's face it. Who's only going to eat 1/4 cup of ice cream. So for the purposes of this, I have made this somewhat realistic and changed it to 1 cup (which is still not all that realistic in my world). For 1 cup of my favorite ice cream, we are looking at a whopping 1,040 calories and 92 grams of sugar! That is almost an entire day's calories, and soooooo much sugar! We could have 10 cups of frozen grapes for the same amount of calories!
Some of the other fruits that I like to freeze include strawberries, blueberries, mangos, pineapples, peach slices, plums (we have an Italian plum tree in our yard), etc. Try freezing your favorite fruit this summer for a healthy alternative and nature's popsicle!
Happy eating,
Jenelle
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