Freezing Fruit to Save Money

Bottom shelf- frozen peaches, nectarines, mangoes, and bananas. 

I absolutely love mango. It's my favorite fruit in the whole wide world. It's my husband's favorite fruit as well, and my kids would eat it day and night if I'd let them.

The thing is, though, that even when they are in season, they are expensive fruit where I live. Which means we usually only end up getting mangoes a few times a year.

This morning I was in the grocery store and saw mangoes- on the reduced rack. I've never seen them there before. The reduced rack is a great way to get produce cheaply- caveat is- they're past prime.

I took a good look at the mangoes and saw that they looked pretty good, unblemished, free of nasty looking bits. Just ripe. Very ripe.

I bought the lot- a ton of mango! And while I was at it, a bunch of peaches and nectarines from the reduced rack. 

At a great price.

Now what could you do with a lot of past prime fruit? I'll give you a hint- you put them in your fridge for a day or two or three and there's a good chance you'll have a stinkin' lot of mold.

You freeze them!

Freezing fruit is a great way to save money.

It saves money in many ways:

You can buy past prime fruits (and veggies) for cheaper, because you don't have to worry about using it all up before it spoils.

You can buy large quantities of fruit when they're on sale and freeze them to use later when they're being sold at full price.
You can grow fruit or forage fruit and therefore get it free, picking a lot, more than you can eat in one go, and then freeze it to use long term.
And of course, no more throwing out spoiled fruits that you bought but don't have time to finish before they go off. Just freeze instead!

What can you do with frozen fruit? Well, you can't just eat it plain as you would fresh fruit.

But there are some great stuff you can do with your frozen fruit:
Blend them in smoothies with milk.
Blend them up into ice cream.
Defrost, and then use them in cakes, pies, and crumbles.
Defrost and cook up into compote, fruit soup, or blended fruit sauce.
Defrost and blend them up and refreeze as popsicles.
Cook dishes like sweet and sour chicken with them.

When you use frozen fruit, remember that once defrosted, their texture will be different, so you want to either cook them, blend them, or eat them frozen.
It's also hard to cut them up once frozen and defrosted, so depending on how you want to use your fruit, cut them differently before freezing. Since I plan on using my mango mainly for smoothies and ice cream, I just cut them into chunks that will blend more easily. But since I will be using the peaches and nectarines for baking, I cut them into slices before freezing.

To use your frozen fruit, some find it beneficial to lay them all in a single layer on a tray until frozen, and once frozen, put them all into a container or bag, because this makes them not stick together when freezing. I don't have enough room in my freezer to do this, so I just freeze mine in bags, preferably smaller bags so I can defrost as much as I need.
If you want to use less than what is in a bag and the fruit is all frozen together, take it out of the freezer and let it soften for about 5 minutes, then use a sharp knife as a wedge and break off pieces. If this doesn't work, let it defrost a bit longer.

I love freezing fruit because I like fruit and I like cheap, and I love frozen treats.

Do you freeze fruit? What fruit do you usually freeze? Why do you usually freeze that fruit? What do you do with it after freezing?