Mix It Up: Winter Fruit Salad

In addition to eating more veggies, one of the shifts in our diet that my husband and I have implemented in the last few years is that we eat more fruit. The wonderful array of phytochemicals, vitamins, fiber and other things is quite healthful. Although I have always liked fruit, I found that most of my fruit eating consisted of a serving of fruit in the morning along with cereal or yogurt and maybe a small piece of fruit as an afternoon snack.  One day a friend came over and brought a fruit salad that consisted simply of a really large bowl of many different kinds of cut up fruit.  The four of us devoured the contents of bowl quickly and I realized some of the advantages of a fruit salad:  the pieces were cut up small enough to be easy to eat, there were a variety of tastes in each spoonful, with multiple kinds of fruit, if one type happened to be slightly underripe, the other fruits helped to offset this.

In winter, I like to use navel oranges that are at their peak juiciness and add in apple and banana.  I find the texture of crunchy apple and soft banana contrast well. And these are relatively economical fruits in winter.  To augment this, I will add some defrosted berries (a cheaper way to eat blueberries).  I generally serve this fruit salad without any added sweetener or topping, but if we have guests over, I might serve a honey lime sauce on the side. I know this seems almost too simple to post a recipe, but it works for me.

Winter Fruit Salad
makes 4 large servings

1 apple, cored and unpeeled
1 banana, peeled
1 orange, with peels cut away with a knife
1 pear, cored, (optional)
1/2 cup blueberries, defrosted from frozen
1/2 cup strawberries, defosted from frozen

Cut up the apple, banana, pear and orange flesh into chunks. (I make them about 1/2 inch cubes, but not fancy). Place all of the fruit into a large serving bowl, squeeze the cut away orange peel (should yield a surprising amount of juice) over the fruit which helps prevent the apple and banana from turning brown. Stir to mix all of the fruits together.  Serve immediately, or place in a sealed container in the refrigerator until serving time.

Honey-lime Sauce
makes about 1/2 cup

1/2 cup plain yogurt
1-3 teaspoons honey
Zest and small amount of juice of 1 lime

Combine all of the ingredients in a small bowl and stir to incorporate the honey well.  Adjust the sweetener to taste.  Serve over any kind of fruit salad.

see more tips at Works for Me Wednesday and Grocery Cart Challenge