Filling the freezer...

Its hard to believe it is May and we still have oranges on our trees. Not only are they still on the trees, but they have hit their prime and they make fantastic juice. Every year, we have to go through and pull all the fruit at the end of the season to make room for the new fruit. We've been a little lazy about it this year which means we still have half of our trees full or oranges. (The other half was picked by someone who wanted our oranges) Each tree takes well over an hour to strip so we gladly allow anyone to come pick all they want!

We stripped a tree last week and threw most of the fruit away (sadly enough food banks receive too much fruit in this area and don't take many donations) but I kept some to juice. I was surprised just how sweet the juice was. There's only so much fresh juice we need in our fridge...but our freezer could handle quite a bit! I like to use frozen juice for our orange julius drinks.

I set up a station outside on the patio and I went to town juicing baskets full of oranges.

I froze a lot in two cup portions for orange julius and the rest I froze in gallon sized bags for summer slush drinks. (They freeze great laying flat - once they're frozen they stack nicely.) I was a sticky mess when all was said and done but my freezer was happy!

Not to mention I found a great deal on strawberries the same week - I froze 32 lbs for smoothies which will hopefully get us by for a couple months.

The freezer is stocked and ready for summer drinks/slushies/smoothies.