Thursday, January 7, 2010

SECOND HAND FRUIT

A few days before Christmas, I bought a ready-made fruit basket to give as a gift. I carried it around in my van for days and never did deliver it. The persons to whom I planned to give it had given us a plate full of decorated cookies each year and we'd never reciprocated. This Christmas, we wanted to do something for them. We didn't receive a cookie plate from them this year, and that was perfectly fine. We're cutting back too and we understand, but I started to think if I give a fruit basket, those people might think they should give something in return, so I intentionally didn't deliver it.
After baking holiday cookies, I asked my spouse to take tins of them to some of our neighbors and decided to give the fruit basket to another neighbor. Spouse tried a number of times to deliver the basket but never found the neighbor home. That turned out to be a very good thing.
To my surprise and dismay, some of the fruit had started to, shall I say, lose it's appeal. I'm relieved the neighbor wasn't home when Spouse tried to deliver the gift. We removed the fruit from the basket and I made a salad from some of the least appealing pieces. The fruit tasted fine. Some of it was a little bruised in spots and no longer fit to give as a gift. That's what I get for not following through in the first place. The fruit was fresh when purchased. I simply didn't want the intended recipient to feel obligated to return the favor. Why do I worry so much about those kinds of things? Here's the recipe for my salad - Spouse loved it:
SECOND HAND FRUIT SALAD
4 yellow delicious apples (or apples of choice)
3 Bartlett pears - ripened
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts
1/2 cup grated Swiss cheese
1/4 cup sweet and sour dressing (or poppyseed dressing)
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 teaspoon groud cinnamon
Chop apples and pears and place in large mixing bowl. Add orange juice and stir (to keep fruit from turning brown). Add other ingredients and mix thorougly.

3 comments:

Cat Nap Inn Primitives said...

yumm!! it sounds so good...yeah I didn't give goodies to some of the regulars..and you know I didn't get anything from them either..wondering if they felt obligated when i do..certainly not my intention..would be nice that they did it just because..oh well..have a wonderful thursday>>:)

sea gull lighting said...

I think im going to have to try this!

Unknown said...

Sounds delicious Kady! I'm going to have to try this combination. Thanks for sharing.