(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)
By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate
Fresh fruit at the peak of ripeness is one of the biggest bargains in the supermarket during the summer. Exotic fruits that just months ago might have broken the bank by being flown in from faraway locales are much better for you and your family - and the environment - when in season from nearby local growers. Fruit is so sweet it's the perfect summer dessert ingredient, along with choices like whole-grain cookies and sugar-free ice creams. The selections are even better when overlapping, such as one-of-a-kind frozen sandwiches made from special bakery cookies, fresh berries and fancy ice cream flavors or grilled peaches filled with lemon sorbet and lemon ice and topped with granola.
Food preparation at any time of year can be easy, nutritious, inexpensive, fun - and fast - as the following split-second sensations prove. They take just
10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare. The dishes 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 effortlessly become a better cook, 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" from both family and guests whether inside your kitchen or outside on your patio.
SUMMER DESSERTS: FRUIT
Much More Than Just an Empty Shell
Make a splash by having more than just one fruit as a serving shell and filling it with more exotic treats than just the cut-up fruit. On a buffet line, fill not only a watermelon, but cantaloupes, grapefruits, pineapples and even kiwis. (Slice off the bottoms to make flat, scoop out pulp and use to blend into a dressing for the fruit salad and fill with a refreshing either homemade or store-bought cherry ice topped with sweetened coconut.)
Hypnotizing Icy-Hot Choices
Grill apples, pears, peaches or nectarines and, while hot just before serving, carefully fill with a combination of both creamy lemon sorbet and lemon ice and top with granola.
SUMMER DESSERTS: FROZEN
Great Grapes
Freeze a blend of green and red seedless grapes. Use as exotic ice cubes in ice teas, made from super blends, like Republic of Tea's pomegranate-green or a custom mix from tea chains, like Teavana. Or let the grapes defrost a bit and mash into a slushy dessert "salsa" into which you dip treats like graham crackers, gingersnaps or chocolate sandwich cookies.
Scintillating Sandwiches
Often, plain cookies and ice cream flavors make up ice cream sandwiches. Switch that up with special bakery cookies and exotic ice creams for rousing results. Bottega Louie, for instance, a popular restaurant/bakery in Downtown Los Angeles, serves flat large flavored macaroons stuffed with vanilla bean ice cream and studded with fresh raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.
SUMMER DESSERTS: LIQUID
Smooth as Silk Smoothie Buffet
At juice bars, smoothies are often served up without the custom choices of the recipient. For your next family meal or shindig, set out a smoothie buffet: various fruits, grains and nuts (the aforementioned become powders in the blender just creating more flavor and adding additional nutrients and fiber) and sweet treats, like whole-grain cookie crumbs and no-sugar-added chocolate chips.
Fun Foundations
Use 100 percent juice kid-friendly blend flavors as the bases for tantalizing combinations with fresh fruit. Juicy Juice brand kiwi-strawberry, for instance, blended with banana and coconut milk becomes a tropical delight. Welch's Essentials white grape-peach-mango is a nutritional powerhouse and only becomes more so when choices like fresh nectarine and plum slices are blended in. It's a fun way to introduce new flavors to kids, too, like Welch's guava-pineapple. If available in you region, use the opportunity to show off a real guava and blend it into a fun after-meal treat with the juice.
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK: Healthful 100 percent fruit leather products don't just have to sit there as solo treats. Roll out flat and slather them with thin layers of exotic spreads, like vegan cream cheese mixed with sliced green onions and basil or sugar-free whipped cream blended with sugar-free whole-grain cookie crumbs before rolling up again into custom gems.
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.
