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| Christmas morning breakfast, with Grandma's bread and eggnog |
I adore fruit salads and I used to only eat fruit salads when someone else made them because I thought they had to include a plethora of ingredients (like smoothies). So much work! But no.
My friend Laura brought over a delicious 3-ingredient fruit salad for a play date and I've been replicating it ever since: diced canned peaches, frozen/defrosted blueberries, sliced bananas. The flavors are perfectly balanced, although I have occasionally tossed a chopped orange in there, too.
And it's simple enough to throw together even on a school morning, but special enough for a company dessert with cookies. And I'm happily, deliberately, using up my frozen blueberries and home canned peaches.
I'm curious if you make fruit salads and how you do it. Surely we have regional approaches and we could all learn some new tricks.
6 comments:
My basic winter fruit salad is made with an apple, cut into bitesized pieces, a banana sliced, half of a 20 oz. can of pineapple chunks, a can of mandarin oranges, or a fresh orange if I happen to have any, a handful of chopped walnuts and a sprinkle of coconut. I throw in a dollop of sour cream, or yogurt and gently mix it all up. Depending on what I have on hand I add this or that and use up bits and pieces.
I start with a can of fruit cocktail and add whatever I have on hand - usually I can rustle up an apple or a banana at least. If berries or melon are in season, it makes a much better salad. If I have frozen orange juice concentrate on hand, I like to add a good dollop - it makes the canned juice taste better.
I usually start with a can of pineapple and a can of mandarin oranges and then add whatever I have fresh. I find that a kiwi in half slices in a fruit salad gives the same fresh taste as fresh strawberries for me without much expense. We also enjoy fresh sliced oranges in the winter, alone with a bit of sugar stirred in and allowed to macerate for a bit, they are delicious. At our house where we are phobic about too ripe bananas, putting them into any fruit mixture is a great way to disguise and use them up. In the summertime we enjoy cantaloupe added to any fruit mixture. I do not care for a melon mixture because to me the flavors mix in an odd way and all of it tastes blah.
Our favorite is called fruit tapioca. You thicken the canned fruit juice with tapioca and then stir in a bit of oj concentrate. Mix it with the cut-up fruit and also throw in some grapes/bananas/grapefruit/kiwi/or any other fresh fruit you have laying around. I know it's not preferable to use oj concentrate but I keep it on hand to use bits of it here and there in recipes like this :)
I never make fruit salad unless I happen to have a large variety of fruit that needs to be used fast, which happens about once a year.
What a good idea to use home-canned fruits! I never thought of that. Looking forward to having some fruit salad soon.
I make fruit salad quiet often. [and each time it is different, just depending on what fruits , I have available]
I put my diced apples, Can of mandarin oranges[or a fresh one],can pineapple diced, box of rasins, I stir in a few tablespoons of cool whip topping [to bind it together, add a few pecans ..
Sometimes for a change, I will take a box of sugar free jello and stir the powder up in some cool whip and then add my fruits. A completely different taste.. My grandkids love it.
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