Nosh: The Simplest Fruit Salad
Listen up, people. By now, if you've followed my blog in any way you'll have realized that I'm a big advocate of making fresh and local and delicious food that's generally in season. I also watch an unreasonable amount of food documentaries. After watching a perfect storm of Food, Inc., A Place at the Table and Jamie Oliver's TED talk...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_QOzc79Uc]
...I got tired of feeling like I wasn't doing something...more... You know? I mean, I legitimately really truly had dreams that woke me up in the middle of the night, about finding ways to get involved. (Yes, way.)
So I joined Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and am now the official food ambassador for Lewisburg, PA. Yay, me! I feel the weight of diplomacy settling on my shoulders, though it doesn't change the fact that all opinions expressed on this blog belong to me.
Once you're a food ambassador you get monthly challenges to try and meet. Among the first of my challenges that showed up in my inbox on July 1? Make a fruit salad.
Of course, I can't leave well enough alone.
I figure part of this food revolution thing is not just to follow recipes to their exact letter and replicate only what is before me (and I never quite seem to be able to do that anyway) but rather, that we learn the principles of healthy eating and adapt them to our particular likes and needs in a given situation. And I don't like bananas. It's not that the banana has done anything wrong, per se; in fact, I used to love them. Sadly, I had a banana-flavored diet shake when I was a kid that ranks in the top three of most loathsome food products I've ever put in my mouth, rivaled only by tinned asparagus and the shrimp stock that caused me to find out the hard way that I was, indeed, allergic to shellfish.
So no bananas. Besides, it's summer! Fruits are abundant! I used white plums, clementines (which are so tender I thought cutting them into supremes would be overkill), strawberries, apples (because apples + yogurt = one of my favorite things ever) and blackberries. I made this for my family on the 4th of July and had to take two small and occasionally fussy children into consideration; thinking poppy seeds might weird them out I added mint from my back yard instead. Since I was making this for a group of people I thought it would be easier to mix in the yogurt instead of using it as a topping (and I was right).
It rocked.
This was fresh, it was real, and it had appeal for everyone at the table. Bonus: it came together in about ten minutes. I would say it was less but you do have to do some chopping. My brother, watching his kids nosh on the fruit (and enjoying it more than a little, himself) said, "So...you can give me this recipe, right?" You bet I can, brother. Mission accomplished.
Enjoy.