Waste Not....and Frozen Lemonade Yogurt Pops

Frozen Lemonade Yogurt Pops

I am on a bend to not waste anything.  I am ultra conserving.  It drives my kids wacky that I'm doing this, but I'm trying to teach them that we can get ahead in many ways in life if we just pay attention to all the details.

One of the biggest areas I needed to pay attention to was just how much food I bought and how much I threw away. When I was able to finally focus on what I was buying and preparing, I uncovered a pretty huge savings.  My first month of this experiment was this last fall.  I set out to not spend more than $500 on groceries that month.  I did my best effort to clip coupons and try to buy sale items. At the end of the month I had spent $900.


I tightened in again.  $500 for the next month.  I refused to buy boxes, I write The Carbometer, I shouldn't be cooking with the help of a box anyway!  This new rule would help get all those refined sugars and grains out of our diet.  Result that month $650.  I'm not one to give up too easily.  I set out again.  No grocery stores the next month.  Result that month $420.   For January, I've brought the grocery total to $360 and I believe I can get it to $250 for February.

No boxes, no grocery stores - except for 1/2 priced meat specials, lots of meal planning all help make the goal.  Now I make one trip to Costco a month and pick up milk at a big box grocery outlet during the month if I can't get back to Costco and I pick up my fresh spinach from the farmers market.

The problem with shopping bulk is that you sometimes have things which are leftover and you don't know what to do with them.  This month is was plain yogurt.  I had used about a serving of the tub and it was going to expire the next day.  I would literally need to make a lot of something.   I searched the internet and found yogurt pops.  Though it's not hot yet, I thought, nice treat for the kids, but do I have enough of the stuff to make them.  I certainly didn't want to throw in a lot of honey or sugar to make the pops taste good.  It's one thing to save something, but another if it would still go to waste if no one would eat it.

There on the counter was my last container of Country Time Lemonade....I wonder what those pops would taste like with that.  I made a small sample of a cup of yogurt with a tablespoon of Country Time Lemonade.  I had both kids taste it and my husband.  My son and my husband both wanted a bowl of it right away...2 cups down.  My daughter said she'd eat it as a frozen pop.  With the remainder I made 8 frozen pops and 6 two-ounce cups.

Yogurt officially saved!  Will I buy more Country Time Lemonade?  I have to think about that...  technically it's not a box.

Yogurt pops:

7 servings of plain yogurt - 133 carbs
8 tablespoons of Country Time Lemonade mix - 128 carbs
Total carbs: 261 carbs

Mix well and place in pop containers and freeze - This made 8 - 3 oz pops and 7 - 2 oz pops
Approx.  13.7 carbs for 2 oz pops and 20.6 carbs for 3 oz pops.

Happy Carb Counting!