Love Your Fruit and Eat it, Too

With an increase of nutritional awareness, the popularity of fruit has grown. Fruit is sweet and uplifting to eat; it looks nice and is good for us, too. How lucky we are to have fruit!

Everyone should have a bowl of fresh fruit on their kitchen table for easy access, as well as for visual appeal and nutritional inspiration. Fruit is the perfect snack mid-day; it can be used to embellish the flavors of a meal, or enjoyed as a dessert. It is low in fat, packed with vitamins and minerals, high in fiber, and so satisfying. What’s not to love?

Raw Fruit

There isn’t much that you need to do in order to enjoy fruit. In its original state, fruit is bursting with flavor! There are some methods of raw preparation that can be used to alter its texture (though why mess with perfection?) Raw is the most nutritious way to consume fruit; the nutritional value is fully maintained and the enzymes remain intact. You can process raw fruit by the following methods: blended, juiced, or frozen. Below are some suggestions:

To blend: By adding some liquid and fruit in a blender or processor you can create a variety of fruit smoothies. A combination of frozen fruit, fruit juice and a banana (for thickening) lends itself to a limitless smoothie adventure! See below for some simple ingredient suggestions.

To juice: Juicing is an easy way to consume a large amount of fruit at one time. It is ideal to use a juice extractor, although if you do not have one, you can use a blender and a fine mesh bag to separate the fiber from the juice (which truthfully can be messy!). Recommended fruits include: apples, berries, citrus, melons, or any fruits with a high water content (i.e. not bananas!). Juicing does eliminate the fiber content, however, so it does lose some health benefits.

To freeze: One of my all-time favorite snacks during the summer is frozen grapes (or “grice”: grape-ice). The best way to prepare “grice” is to thoroughly wash the grapes and remove them from their stem. Then, put them in a container into the freezer overnight.

Cooked Fruit

In addition to being delicious in its raw state, fruit can also be delicious cooked. Unfortunately the nutritional value can be slightly compromised with certain heat methods, but even still, fruit remains a healthy choice. Because the heat tends to soften the fruit’s delicate texture, some fruits lend themselves better than others. Some heat processes include: baked, broiled, fried, or poached. Below are some recommendations, as suggested in Brown’s Understanding Food:

To bake: apples, pears, bananas, plums, peaches, rhubarb and blueberries are ideal to bake in pies, scones, or muffins.

To broil: pineapple, bananas, and grapefruit are best for the broiler. Coating the fruit with melted butter and a sprinkle of sugar will help to achieve the perfect browning.

To fry: apple slices, bananas, cherries, and pineapple. Some fried fruits can be a nice addition to a meat dish.

To poach: pears and apples tend to maintain their structure the best although other fruits can be used in this method as well.

Fruit Selection

Most fruits are harvested before they are ripe for shipping purposes. This helps to prevent them from becoming damaged in transport. Unless you are shopping at a Farmer’s Market where you have a selection of local seasonal fruits, most often you will find yourself with an un-ripened fruit selection at the market.

Many fruits will continue to ripen after being picked, although some will not. The following fruits will continue to ripen: apples, apricots, avocados, bananas, cantaloupe, guava, peach, pear, plum, tomato, papaya, mango, and passion fruit. Cherries, citrus fruits, pineapples and strawberries will not continue to ripen, and are best when selected as ripe as possible.

Fruit Storage

Unripe fruits are best to store at room temperature. Once ripened, they can be further preserved in the refrigerator in plastic bags with puncture holes for breath-ability (with the exception of bananas which should be kept at room temperature). I like to keep my fruit in visible locations, either in a decorative bowl as a centerpiece on my kitchen table or on the top shelf in my fridge. That way it is easily accessible, and one of the first things I think of when poking around for a snack!

Fruit Handling

Washing your fruit before consumption is very important, even if you have purchased pesticide-free organic fruit. Various micro-organisms dwell on the surface of the fruit and can cause food born illnesses. Also, fruit can carry germs. How do you know who handled that organic apple before you picked it up? It may seem silly, but even citrus can use a washing; I have an orange tree in my garden which produces the best oranges for juicing. Often I will find bird-droppings on the peel, which if left unwashed, would go straight into my juice (yuck!).

Ah, Fruit!

Fruit is one of the wonderful things life has to offer! It has inspired artists to paint pictures and writers to write poems. Neruda writes in Ode to the Orange, “Give us this day orange daylight, and everyday, and may mankind’s heart, and its clusters of fruit, be both bitter and sweet: irrepressible source of freshness, may it hold and protect the earth’s mysterious simplicity, and the perfect oneness of an orange.” Need I say more?

Three Simple Smoothie variations:

Put ingredients in a blender then blend until smooth:

1. Banana, frozen blueberries and orange juice

2. Banana, frozen mango, frozen pineapple and orange juice

OR

3. Banana, frozen berries (blackberries, raspberries, blueberries) and orange juice

Homemade Produce Wash recipe:

Mix together in a bowl: 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of white vinegar, 1TBS Baking Soda, 10 drops of grapefruit seed extract. Transfer to spray bottle and spray produce thoroughly. Let sit for up to 5 minutes, rinse thoroughly (you can even use a gentle scrubber on some peels and rinds).

Local farmer’s market locator: http://www.localharvest.org/farmers-markets/

References: Brown's Understanding Food, Neruda's Ode to Common Things

Photo in this hub by Jessica Ann Jacobs, copyright 2009. http://jessicaannjacobs.com