(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)
By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate
In the autumn, the apple never falls far from the tree - or from most of our recipe boxes. Whether it's regarding desserts, side dishes, salads or entrees, apples and other seasonal fruits quickly start populating dishes.
For the last warm breezes of summer, however, a fun idea is to seasonally update sweet juicy summer fruits. Grab a fresh batch if they are still in the market. Or, if you don't find it, visit your supermarket's freezer or canned foods section. Packaged at the peak of freshness, frozen and canned fruits are often overlooked as nutritious flavor enhancers for occasional use.
Another great part of this innovative, easy and economical move (since the fresh fruits are still in season, often they are on sale, or at least priced low) is the accompanying ingredients. They are what make a recipe shout "autumn," while at the same time maintaining that special late-summer flair.
Following are some tasty ideas. Fun food like this also proves cooking can be easy, nutritious, economical, entertaining - and fast. They take just 10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare.
The creative combinations are delicious proof that everyone has time for tasty home cooking and, more importantly, the healthy family togetherness that goes along with it! Another benefit: You - and your kidlet helpers - effortlessly become better cooks, since there are no right or wrong amounts. These are virtually-can't-go-wrong combinations, so whatever you choose to use can't help but draw wows - even though technically they are leftovers!
--- Bravo TV's "Top Chef" judge Gail Simmons' peach bread pudding fits the bill. To chunks of challah or brioche, she creatively adds peaches and maple syrup. Make the same additions to your favorite bread pudding recipe.
--- Fruit expert Olwen Woodier makes similar strategic magic with apricots. The author of "Peaches and Other Juicy Fruits: From Sweet to Savory: 150 Recipes for Peaches, Plums, Nectarines and Apricots" (as well as a cookbook on apples) incorporates them and peach yogurt into memorable muffins. The inclusion of ground ginger and honey helps give it the autumn touch. Consider the same kind of steps with your favorite muffin recipe.
--- Create a mixture of chopped nectarines, plums and cherries, stuff inside hollowed pears and then bake. Or mix the same combination with cooked wild rice and stuff inside Cornish game hens or chicken breasts before cooking.
Here are some other spices, often used in the fall, that match well with summer fruits, all of which, while they are still available fresh, you also can freeze yourself for future delicious autumn meals:
--- Cinnamon: Try ground cinnamon in a pureed peeled plum and sweet potato hot soup.
--- Cloves: Season a mixed cherry and fall autumn cobbler with ground cloves.
--- Nutmeg: Finely dice nectarines. Sprinkle them in a hot spinach side dish seasoned with dashes of curry powder and cayenne.
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK: Dollar stores are familiar chains now. Consider buying inexpensive toys of the type that are often given out with fast-food meals and occasionally surprising your kids with them as an accompaniment to a healthful homemade meal. For instance, make a sugar-free ice cream sundae, place it in a small cup and put that in an upside-down plastic baseball cap, or surround a plate of cooked breaded soy strips or nuggets with some of your children's favorite plastic action figures, always, of course, making sure any toys are, according to the manufacturer, age-appropriate and large enough not to pose a choking hazard to small children.
Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling
The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes (Avery/Penguin Putnam) and
Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet (Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.
