I have written many blogs about summer fruit. This year I have been enjoying winter fruit. Our grocery store has carried fresh guava and fresh persimmons all winter.

I love adding guava to my breakfast mix. It tastes especially good with pineapple or pineapple juice.

I buy several persimmons whenever I see them in the stores. I let them ripen on the counter until they are soft, then cut off the top and scoop the fruit out with a spoon.

Imported cherries this winter have been less expensive per pound than summer cherries. I have kept fresh cherries in the refrigerator almost all winter.

We received a box of ruby red grapefruit as a Christmas gift. We just ate the last one a few days ago. They are always delicious eaten out of the rind with a spoon. I also like them chopped up in my breakfast mix, especially when I add a scoop of vanilla flavored egg white protein.

Mangos this year have been disappointing. I don’t know a thing about growing mangos, but the growing conditions must have been less than ideal. The ones I have bought have been stringy and not very sweet.

On the other hand, pineapples seem to have been especially good this year. Sweeter and juicier than I remember from previous winters.

My husband and I are not the only ones enjoying winter fruit. We put all of the cores and peelings out for the deer to eat. They love persimmon, mango, and pineapple. I sometimes wonder what Hill Country deer think when they are munching on tropical fruit. Probably their taste buds are just as happy as mine.

Three bits of background before starting this blog.
1. When I first started the BTD, I learned that kale, a vegetable I had never heard of, was highly beneficial. I ate it often at first, but because my family wouldn’t eat it and it smelled terrible when it was cooking, I gradually stopped buying it.

2. I was in a health food store and they had free samples of a new product. Kale chips. They were delicious, outstanding, crunchy, yummy! I said, “I’ll buy a bag of those.” Ouch. I didn’t look at the price: they were really expensive. Double ouch. I didn’t look at the ingredients: they were coated with lots of salt and nuts.

3. DD has been dehydrating vegetables in her oven to take to work as a snack.

So, I decided to make my own kale chips. I bought kale, washed it, dried it, and broke off chip size pieces. I sprinkled on onion and garlic powder. I put it in the oven according to DD’s instructions. It did not stink up the kitchen while it was cooking.

When it was finished, I popped a chip into my mouth. First impression made me smile. It was light and crunchy. As I kept chewing, the tougher it got and the more it tasted like. . . kale. I think the thing that made the packaged chips so delicious was the nuts.

I decided to cook the rest of the kale with onions like I used to. Pew! The kitchen smelled terrible. But kale cooked with onions tastes good. I added ground turkey and had a nice lunch.

I hope I will continue to buy kale, even if I am the only one who eats it. I’d like to experiment further with kale chips. There is potential here, I just haven’t put it all together yet.

I can almost always find plenty to eat at a pot luck dinner, but last night was an exception. The funny part was what all of the ladies were saying after it was over.

My Honorable Husband sings in the choir at our church. Last night the choir had a party and a pot luck dinner. HH signed me up to bring a salad. At the grocery store I found strawberries and pineapple on sale. I thought that would make a pretty Valentine month salad. I served it in a bowl shaped like an apple that we received as a wedding gift.

The people who organized the party were so creative with music related games and table decorations. We had lots of fun playing and visiting. Then it was time to eat.

There were three salads: my fruit salad, a pasta salad, and potato salad.
There was one vegetable: hash brown casserole.
There were five entrees: spaghetti with meat sauce, chicken with a cheese topping, a chicken and noodle casserole, spicy venison sausage, and meat cooked with onions and green peppers.
There were at least six cakes and one plate of cookies.

You are thinking the same thing I was thinking as I approached the serving line – there is not much here for a Type O. I took some of my own fruit, some of the sausage, some of the meat, and a little of the chicken with cheese topping. The meat turned out to be pork, but even if I had known that ahead of time, I think I would have taken some, though perhaps not as much. There were just no other choices.

The funny part came at the end of the party when we were cleaning up. All of the venison was gone. There were a few stray strawberries in the bottom of my bowl. More than half of the meat and onions was gone. There were lots of leftovers in every other dish.

Suddenly the other ladies began trying to give their food away. The lady who brought the spaghetti said, “Someone take this home, we are both on a diet and can’t eat it.” The lady who brought the potato salad said, “This only lasts a few days and we don’t eat potatoes.” Several of the ladies who brought cakes were saying, “Please take some cake, I don’t need this in my house.” One lady was offered a take home plate. She waved it away saying, “Not for me, I don’t need all that starch.”

Someone could have brought green beans, or a green salad, or a crock pot of legumes. I’m not sure whether the high carb dishes were brought because our friends wanted to offer comfort food at the party, or whether high carb dishes are less expensive for people on tight budgets in this bad economy.

Regulars on the BTD don’t need me to spell it out, but for the benefit of guests I will gently and kindly say that the people at the party preferred the healthier choices when they served their own plates. Yet they brought food to a pot luck that they didn’t want to take home.