Fruit and the Freezer

No time to cook today but I'm planning on eating a frozen banana so I thought I'd write something up related to that.

Since I like eating kind of healthy--gotta try to keep a girlish figure somehow--and since ice cream is full of fat and popsicles have pretty much no nutritional value I like sticking fruit into the freezer to snack on.  (Sorbet bars are fantastic but less cost-efficient.)  Not all fruit works in the freezer though, obviously.

Fruits not to freeze:
-Anything filled with seeds.  Who wants to keep running into seeds in the middle of snacking on some nice, crunchy, frozen watermelon?  Nobody.  Same goes for oranges.
-Fruits that crunch when fresh.  Apples, pears (even very ripe ones), etc
-Unpeeled fruit.  I found out the hard way that bananas are a lot harder to peel when the peel is frozen.  Peel it first and wrap it in foil.  Go ahead and cut melon off the rind too and stick it in a freezer bag.

Fruits that freeze well:
-Bananas (peeled first), grapes, blueberries, and melon.  (If you want watermelon buy a seedless one.)  However, frozen melon is really mushy if it thaws, so don't stick it in your lunchbox.  The other ones will be fine if they thaw.

A cheap, healthier substitute for popsicles:
When I was little my mom had some little plastic popsicle molds with re-useable sticks for pouring juice into.  You can probably still find those at the grocery store.  Pineapple juice was my favorite.
You can also pour juice into regular ice cube trays.  It's tougher to hold if you don't have a stick, but it has the advantage of looking really fancy if you put them into drinks like regular ice.  Ginger ale with bright red cranapple ice cubes looks really neat and tastes pretty good as they melt.