Lately I have been trying to be a little more conscious of our food waste at home. We have a long way to go, but I’m making an effort to waste less. (This lady is super passionate about food waste, I think you’ll enjoy her blog.) However, these kids of mine seem to foil my efforts at every turn! They love to eat apples (which is great!) but they tend to not eat them down to the core, and they also tend to leave them half eaten all over the house. Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me? I certainly don’t want to discourage their apple eating habits, but it does get frustrating when they go through about 5 lbs. of apples a week and you know that half of that really didn’t get eaten. So I came up with a plan to do something with the half eaten apples.
Now when I find a partially eaten apple I don’t need to get frustrated. I simply trim off the teeth marked part . . .
cut the remaining apple into cubes . . . .
and throw all the apple cubes into a bag in the freezer.
When the bag is getting full, I make an apple crisp. Crisps are my go to dessert because I almost always have all the ingredients on hand plus I don’t have to drag out a mixer. It is so easy. This same recipe except with frozen berries is my go to breakfast item to bring to MOPS meetings!
Here is the recipe:
– Soften 3/4 C. butter in a mixing bowl
Add:
– 1 C. flour
– 1 C. rolled oats or quick oats
– 3/4 C. brown sugar, packed
– 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
– 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
Mash all of this together with a fork until it forms little clumps. Press half into the bottom of a 8×8 pan. Add your frozen apple chunks until they are pretty much to the top of the pan. Sprinkle the apple chunks with cinnamon and sugar. Top it with the rest of your crumb mixture. Place in an oven preheated to 350 degrees. Bake 40-45 min or until fruit is bubbly and the topping is browned. Make sure you don’t under bake this crisp. Because the apples have been frozen, they can be a bit watery if you take them out of the oven too soon. If the topping is getting too brown, just place some foil on top and continue baking.
And that my friends is a delicious apple crisp made with apples that would have been thrown away otherwise. Makes my heart happy to use up food and to see how my kids scarf down apples! Let me know if you give this a try, or if you have other food waste tips. I would love to hear from you!
