Jennifer's Week Twenty-Seven Recipe: Fruit Salsa

So, Tricia had a bonfire last night and I offered to supply some sort of food item to the cause. Hey, I could experiment on more than just my poor husband and son! I did not feel like baking, mainly because of the cookies I made earlier in the week and the fact that later today I will be making a German Chocolate Bundt Cake from scratch for Chad's birthday. Also, I was looking for something that would be refreshing - outside, heat, fire (more heat). Well, fruit is refreshing AND it's good for you! So I found a recipe for a fruit salsa on AllRecipes.com, altered it a bit and then I unnecessarily doubled it. Ah well.



Fruit Salsa (this is the recipe I doubled)

3 kiwis, peeled and diced

2 Golden Delicious apples - peeled, cored and diced

8 ounces raspberries

1 pound strawberries, hulled and diced

1/2 pint blueberries

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 tablespoon brown sugar

3 tablespoons fruit preserves (I used strawberry because that's what we had on hand)


Throw all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix them together. Refrigerate for at least 15 minutes before serving. Serve with cinnamon sugar chips. (The recipe from allrecipes.com came with a recipe for these chips, however I ran out of time and just bought some cinnamon sugar pita chips which worked out just fine.)


Would I make this again? Yes! Very tasty, although I discovered that I don't have a lot of patience for chopping many, many things into tiny, tiny pieces. Considering that I made so much of it, I have leftovers that will go on waffles or pancakes (per Erin's suggestion) and ice cream.

Karin's Week Twenty-Six Recipe: Plum Tart

Yay! I've made it half-way through the year, and am still cooking strongly. Appropriately enough, this week's recipe is not one out of a cookbook or off a website, but one that I pretty much made up out of things that sounded like they might go well together. I had 4 plums that were past ripe, and needed to be used in some fashion. We were also having company over for dinner, and they like experimenting with food just as much as we do.  So, without further ado, I give you Karin's Plum Tart.

Karin's Plum Tart

Crust for 9in pie
3 T raspberry jam
4 very ripe plums
5 oz cream cheese, softened
6-7 T sugar, divided

Preheat oven to 400 deg. Place crust into 9 or 10 in tart pan (the one with the very short sides). Melt raspberry jam in microwave until consistency of syrup. Using a spoon, cover the bottom of the crust with the raspberry jam, making sure to cover evenly. In a small bowl, mix together the cream cheese and 3 T of the sugar until cheese is of a spreadable consistency, rather like frosting. Spread cream cheese mixture into tart pan - this will take a bit of doing, as it does not like to stick to the jam. Slice plums into thin slices, and arrange over the cream cheese in a fan-like pattern, making sure to cover all of the cream cheese with the slices of plum. Sprinkle the tart with the remaining sugar, using enough so that it looks good, I think about 3-4 T was what was used..

Bake at 400 deg until crust is lightly browned, about 35 minutes. Let tart stand for about 4-5 minutes before serving.

This was something that I wasn't sure was going to turn out as well as it sounded in my head. However, I was pleasantly surprised. It smelled good, looked gorgeous (we even took a picture), and tasted so good, that my dinner guests wanted to know if we could just eat it all right then. I said why not, we're all grown ups, and so we did. A tart that lasted all of 20 minutes from the time I took it out of the oven to the time it was completely eaten is a good thing to have in my cooking repertoire. I may have to try this out with other fruits as I come across them. If you do, let me know how it tastes.

Karin's Bonus Week Twenty-Two Recipe: Blueberry Pie

Fresh blueberries were on sale this last week at the grocery store, and I haven't had the fresh kind in a very long time. After asking Nate what type of dessert he'd like, pie was the winner. I used my trusty Betty Crocker 40th Anniversary Edition Cookbook as I wanted to try and make a fruit pie not using my standard tapioca method.

Blueberry Pie

Pastry for 9-inch Two Crust Pie
3/4 c sugar
1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I used Penzey's, of course)
6 c of fresh blueberries, or so
1 T lemon juice
1 T butter, cut into small pieces

Heat oven to 425 deg. Prepare pastry and line bottom of pie plate (I used a Pyrex pie plate). Mix sugar, flour and cinnamon in large bowl. Stir in blueberries. Turn into pastry-lined pie plate. Sprinkle with lemon juice and dot with butter. Cover with top crust and slit to let steam and juices escape; seal and flute edge. Cover edge with strip of foil, or pie crust cover. Remove during last 15 min of baking to allow edge to brown.  Bake 35-45 min or until crust in brown and pie is bubbly.

This tasted wonderful. I forget how nice fresh fruit tastes compared to frozen until spring/summer comes around again. The blueberries stayed nice and plump and didn't get mushy. The only issue was with the dry ingredients. When turning the blueberry mixture into the pie crust, the flour/sugar mixture ended up dumping in all in one spot, and although I tried to spread it out a bit, we ended up with clumps of cooked 'crust' in the middle of the pie. Next time I would maybe try and sift the berries out and then pour the dry mixture evenly over the crust.

Karin's Week Fifteen Recipe: Random Fruit Pie

This recipe is a result of moving things from our basement deep freeze into the new freezer in the kitchen. And we were having friends over for dinner, and I needed a dessert recipe that went well with the vanilla ice cream I had made earlier in the week to test the freezing power of the new freezer. I basically took what I've done for other fruit pies and threw a pie together out of what I could find.

Random Fruit Pie

1 full pkg Pillsbury Pie Crusts (or crust for a 2 crust pie)
~ 4-6 c frozen fruit of your choice (I used mostly rhubarb with some strawberries)
2 T tapioca
1 c sugar (or to taste)
1/2 tsp or so lemon juice

Preheat oven to 450 deg.

Bring pie crust to room temperature and fit into 9-in pie plate - I usually use a glass one, as it's a bit deeper than my metal ones. Thaw fruit just enough to break into individual pieces. Place fruit into pie crust. Sprinkle with tapioca, sugar, and lemon juice. Place top crust on pie and tuck in edges. Make slits in pie to allow for steam to escape.

Place pie in oven, with pie plate on cookie sheet so as to catch any drips. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 deg. Bake for 40-50 minutes more, covering edges of pie crust for last 10 minutes to prevent excess browning. Actual time needed depends on amount of fruit used.

Consensus was Yum! I also had enough leftovers to serve for another dinner when my parents & grandmother came to visit. This is a great way to use up the random bits of fruit around the house, and I usually have all the ingredients on hand. Now, I just need to learn to make a pie crust that doesn't split on me, then it will be even more homemade.

Chris's Week Ten Recipe: Cherry-Berry Baked Oatmeal

I've never made baked oatmeal, and thought today was the day to give it a try. It took a while to track down a recipe that was low on sugar, but I found one here. This is my own version:

Cherry-Berry Baked Oatmeal

1 c old-fashioned oats

1 T brown sugar

dash cinnamon

2 c skim milk

1/2 t almond extract

1/2 c unsweetened applesauce

1/2 c frozen Trader Joe's Very Cherry Berry Blend

Combine dry ingredients. Add the almond extract to the milk. Add the milk and applesauce to the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the frozen fruit, then pour the mixture into a greased 1 qt casserole dish. Bake for about 40 min at 350F or until set and just starting to turn brown on the top.

NB: any frozen fruit should work with this recipe. You don't have to thaw the fruit. In fact, I suspect that the fruit 'floats' better in the mixture when completely frozen.

Would I make this recipe again? Num, num, num... you bet I would! The result was creamier than regular oatmeal and had a nice, subtle flavor.

Chris's Week Four Recipe: Simple Fruit Salad

I like fruit salad, but I'm not a big fan of creamy fruit salad, which seems to be all the rage in Minnesota. So for lunch with my parents today, I whipped up a simple fruit salad which could be made in almost endless variation. The trick is to use either citrus, syrup, or both to keep fruit like apples and bananas from turning brown.

Simple Fruit Salad

1/2 c chopped walnuts

1-15 oz can mandarin oranges in light syrup

2 medium bananas, sliced

1 honeycrisp apple, chopped

1 T lemon juice.

Shredded coconut (optional)

Toss all the ingredients together, making sure the syrup and lemon juice coat everything well. Before serving, drain out the liquid. Top with shredded coconut if you like.

Would I make this recipe again? You betcha! There was some discussion at the table about the quantity of walnuts. Mom would have used 1/4 cup, but Dad and I agree there can never be too many nuts. That just about sums up Dad and me.