Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Healthy popsicles

Yes, Pop-Ice is easy. But .... healthy? Yah, probably not. And I don't know about you, but handing my girls a Pop-Ice 30 minutes before bed kind of seems counter-productive.

When I was growing up my mom had a popsicle mold. She kept it pretty simple with juices - orange mostly. So when I saw a popsicle mold at K-Mart for $2.99 I grabbed it. I figured we'd just do juice popsicles instead of the long, skinny sugar-pops all summer.

But my imagination got the best of me.

Yes, we've done juice. We've also done some super-watered, nearly-sugarless Kool-Aid. Ugh. I hate having that in the house --- I need to get rid of it. We've also done lemonade.

But more recently we've tried:

Making extra smoothie in the morning and freezing what's left

Plain, non-fat yogurt (no complaints, surprising....)

Banana slices (a banana that had brown spots) with juice

Pineapple (from a can) pureed in the blender (yummo!)

Have you got some tried-and-true ideas? I hesitate to use up all our juice - that's stuff's expensive! And Kool-Aid is disturbingly cheap. So I need some good, inexpensive ideas in my repertoire so I can stay ahead of the sugar-comas. :)

6 comments:

  1. I usually do 1/2 juice or pureed fruit and 1/2 homemade yogurt. It's an awesome way to get rid of extra watermelon! I find that the yogurt makes the pops less icy, which is better for little teeth. The pureed canned pineapple is a great idea. I'll have to try that!

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  2. My mom always did the lemonade and orange juice. Before there were molds she used dixie cups and toothpicks. :)

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  3. I use lipton tea and a LITTLE bit of lemonade(like an arnold palmer). It's lightly sweet and lipton tea also had no calories. Green tea and honey as well. Yummy!

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  4. Just had some fabulous homemade Popsicles yesterday:

    Pineapple hot pepper
    Strawberries and cream
    Coconut
    Avocado

    Watch for the seasonal fruits coming up, peaches come to mind.

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  5. Remember "pudding pops" when we were kids? Freeze pudding or yogurt for the same effect. We've even frozen the go-gurt things that the kids eat & they make yummy popsicles.

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  6. We always did pudding, or even chocolate milk, like the cheapy kind made with syrup and plain milk.

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