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I’m Not a Morning Person
So, those who have ever worked with me and/or know me well, know that one of my weakest qualities is the ability to be on time. I’m not quite sure what my problem is.
I like to stay up late, though not too late … but when my alarms (three of them at staggering times) go off in the morning, I hit the Snooze button 3 times. For each alarm. That, my friends, is NINE snooze buttons.
Then I drag my butt out of bed, proceed to take almost an hour to get ready, and by the time I am putting on my jewelry, I should be punching into the time clock. Thank goodness I only live 6 blocks from work.
All jokes aside, I know this isn’t cool. It isn’t professional, and it is frowned upon by employers. Not to mention, it’s my self I’m cheating out of minutes that I could be getting paid for, all by punching in late. Every day.
Sigh.
My husband isn’t like me. He likes to get up early, and almost always before me. He almost always makes the coffee and breakfast. Sometimes I even get pancakes and sausage on a weekday! I normally grab whatever it is in my rush out the door, and eat it in the car on the way to work. Except on those pancakes and sausage mornings, then I’m just 5 minutes LATER because who wants to eat that in the car?
Meal Prep: Freezer Breakfast Burritos
To do my part, since getting up early enough to do any of these morning duties just obviously isn’t going to happen, sometimes I try to do things ahead of time. I regularly make batches of Freezer Breakfast Burritos, which take a couple of hours to make the batch, but then you have breakfast for many mornings for just 1-2 minutes in the microwave.
Meal Prep: Smoothie Freezer Packs
We also make fruit smoothies quite regularly. I decided to make some “Smoothie Freezer Packs” and put everything that we would put in a smoothie-for-two in a freezer bag – so it’s ready to dump in the blender.
I emptied both chest freezers this morning, defrosted them, and then reorganized everything as I put it back in. As part of that process, I took most of the fruit and anything else that could go in a smoothie out of the freezer.
The photo shows 16 bananas + 1-quart bag, a part jar of rhubarb sauce, 2 gallons and 1 quart of strawberries (1 gallon went back in the freezer after the photo was taken), a partial bag of blueberries, a quart bag of pineapple, a dab of raspberry sherbet, and a couple of containers of my Grandma’s freezer jam, which I talk about in my Wild About Rhubarb post. I ended up using 2 containers of it in this project, and 2 went back in the freezer.
When the bananas in our pantry get too ripe to eat, we throw them in the freezer whole, with the peelings on. I didn’t show that in the photo because they turn black and don’t look very appetizing, and actually I was halfway done peeling them and realized I hadn’t taken a photo. So, this bowl of bananas came out of the freezer, I let them thaw a bit and peeled them.
Assembling the Freezer Smoothie Packs
To put these together, I got 8 quart-size freezer bags labeled them, and put 2 bananas in each (plus a bit from that quart bag I mentioned above.) Three of the “smoothie packs” got blueberries, pineapple and rhubarb sauce. One got strawberries and pineapple, and the other four got strawberries. Each bag got a tablespoon of Grandma’s freezer jam, and a couple of lucky ones got a teaspoon of sherbet. The 2 quarts of yogurt were divided among the 8 bags. I also had a part container of peach yogurt in the fridge so I used it as well. I would say each quart bag got about 4-6 ounces of yogurt. Once I had everything in the bags, I sealed them and laid them flat in the freezer.
These babies are ready to pull out of the freezer, dump in the blender, and bam – 2-minute smoothie for two. I think my husband usually puts a tad more yogurt in them than I had here, but we can always add a bit more as we make them, and maybe some milk and/or fruit juice if any liquid is needed.
This should save some of that precious time in the morning. It got a bit of a mess out of the freezer, too!
I have a board dedicated to smoothies on my Pinterest if you’d like to check it out!
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