Little Tid Bits

All the decorations have been put away, the cookies/ candies devoured, and all the new presents now have a home. Yet on my kitchen counter is a basket of fruit overflowing withlemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit. And after being in the hospital on and off for over a week now it is well on its way to the garbage- even amongst the six of us we will NEVER eat that much fruit before it goes bad.

So I set out to be GREEN from my "goals" for this year and the first step I am taking is the fruit basket. It is will also kick start # 2 on that list of eating healthier to loose my baby weight. After speaking with my friend Stephanie in the hospital (sadly her little one was also admitted a few doors down) she suggested making for smoothies to try and get Prestton to eat. Now the kind of smoothie I want and the kind that Prestton needs are completely opposite. But they both require adding some yummy fruit.

I started by peeling and segmenting each of my citrus variety and placing 1 pound of each fruit into a freezer bag. (I have a small kitchen scale for measuring that worked out GREAT for this!) Each bag was dated, labeled and placed in my freezer for future smoothie use. Steph suggested a smoothie made from oranges, strawberries and rhubarb with a dash of O.J. For Prestton's smoothie we are going to add a high calorie milk mixture of Vitamin D milk and Half/ Half with yogurt. Mine will be made with Skim milk and non-fat yogurt. A small step I think in the right direction.

When I was done with all my peeling, I noticed the huge pile of citrus peels. This is where being GREEN comes in. Why throw away all those peels? I was sure they had some kind of use. So to Google I went. I found several things that you can do with orange peels specifically. Here is what I did:

1. Boil orange peels with cloves and let simmer to make a homemade potpourri.

2. Peeled off the zest from the peel and placed in an air tight herb container for baking/ cooking.

3. Started a compost bin (gross I know but there is a HUGE list of items that can go into this and what a great way to "feed" your plants/ garden). If you are interested visit www.epa.gov for a long list of do's and don'ts. It will also give you the steps on how to make your own bin- easy and cost effective.

4. Rubbed the peels on my indoor plants to keep my cat from wanting to get into the soil. (she is pretty good about it and never uses it as a litter box, but I have caught her scratching at the dirt)

Voila! One step closer to keeping to my resolutions!

If you would like to share your ideas or recipes for this post please leave a comment. Thanks for stopping by!