Never-ending Fruit Salad

Now that summer is in full force, and all kinds of fresh fruits are plentiful at the market, here's an idea for fruit salad that's easy on the cook, and always on hand.

Start with some of your favorite fruits. Avoid fruits that brown easily after peeling, such as bananas, pears, or apples.  I like to start with a good cantaloupe, honeydew or pineapple, cut into chunks.  Watermelon is another good choice. Add some seedless red grapes, navel orange or clementine segments, sliced strawberries, and maybe a couple of sliced kiwi fruits. The idea here is to get a good variety of colors in the salad.

Even after you've eaten some of the original fruit salad, you can add more-- or different fruits to the leftovers to make a new and different salad.  When you are at the point of using up what's left of your salad,you could add bananas, pears or apples because the browning issue is of less concern. You can even add drained canned fruit if you desire. (Note: Choose water-packed canned fruits if you are calorie conscious.)

With a little forethought, you could make a fruit salad that continues to reward you and your family for several days, or even a week!  Most of the effort goes into the planning and initial prep. What's not to like about that!

WW Points: ZERO

Image source: FLICKR

Swedish Nuts: A somewhat healthy snack!

This recipe is something I would usually associate with the winter holidays, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving, but they are good any time of year.  They make a great snack and are good for gift giving.

Swedish Nuts

serves 12

3 1/2 cups mixed nuts
1/2    cup butter
2       egg whites
1      cup white sugar
salt, to taste

Preheat over to 325 degrees. Place nuts on a 10 x 15 inch jellyroll pan, and bake for 10 minutes.

Remove nuts from pan; add butter and allow to melt.

In a medium bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually beat the sugar and salt into the egg whites. Fold the toasted nuts into the egg white mixture. Arrange the coated nuts on the buttered jellyroll pan.

Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated over, turning the nuts with a spatula every 10 minutes, until they are crisp and golden.

Remove tray from oven; allow the nuts to cool and then store them in an airtight container.

This recipe appears in the Allrecipes "Tried & True Thanksgiving & Christmas Cookbook.

Sourdough Bread Part II

I have now been able to use my sourdough starter a couple of times!

The first time I baked two of the traditional boule shaped loaves; we are still enjoying the fruits of my labor! I used a recipe for "Black Canyon Sour Dough Bread" on Mike's Sourdough web page.

I kept my starter going for a few more weeks...
I was able to keep it "bubbling and doubling" using Mike's technique simply by discarding a portion of starter, then feeding it with flour and water every 12 hours. Last week I decided to bake again and I decided to bake using loaf pans. I also used the same recipe but decided to change the ratio of white flour to wheat flour...used more white flour and less wheat this time.  Here are the results:

My next challenge should be interesting.  Now that the starter has had about a month to develop, I chose to store it in the refrigerator for a few weeks.  This will put it in a somewhat dormant state; it will need to be fed about once a week until I attempt to bring it back out of the fridge and revive it for use! 

I find this project interesting--I hope you do too.  I am still amazed that you can actually make bread this way.  And I will keep you posted as to what happens when I try to revive the starter. Hopefully it's all good!