Don't Knock It Till You've Tried It... Easter and Fruit Salad

Happy Resurrection Day!


What a glorious day that this Easter has been for me. I woke up this morning with trembles running through my body...my Savior is alive! At midnight last night, I decided to look at some Easter music and stumbled upon Kari Jobe's new song "Forever." I fell in love with the song and spent some time practicing so I could sing it at church this morning. If you are in the mood for some good "Holy Ghost" bumps, check out her song on YouTube.

If you family is like my family, we celebrate every holiday with food. Today, for example, we had two family dinners (breakfast pre-church and lunch). I wanted to share one of my favorite springtime recipes for a fruit salad. It's always a hit and packed with lots of fruity goodness.

Let me preface this recipe with these two facts:
1. This is not healthy even though it is fruity.
2. Don't knock it until you've tried it.

The kicker to this recipe is kinda crazy: mayo. <---not a spoon licking ingredient.

My mom first made this recipe for a popular local restaurant where people were paying big bucks to purchase it by the pound. I dare say very few of them knew about the mayo. The good news is that you can't taste it or see it, but without it, the recipe just wouldn't be the same.

Fruit Salad
(Not sure about the total servings, but you're going to need a big bowl)

3 Red Delicious Apples
3 Granny Smith Apples (I like the sour kick, but you could sub red apples here)
1/2 Pound of Grapes (Seedless, green or red)
4 Bananas
1 20 Oz. Can of Pineapple Chunks
1/2 cup of Mayo (I don't recommend the "salad dressing" styles here)
Ground Cinnamon to taste (1 tsp?)
16 Oz. Cool Whip

1. Prep the fruit:
-Dice apples into small bites (my bites are small for little mouths)
-Cut the grapes in half
-Slice bananas
-Drain pineapple

2. Mix the fruit together.

3. Add mayo until the fruit has a light coating. You can add more mayo or decrease the amount as desired/needed.

4. Add ground cinnamon. I'm a big cinnamon fan so I add somewhere around a tablespoon, but a teaspoon is sufficient. You could prob even omit this if you aren't a fan.

5. Mix in the Cool Whip.

6. Lick the spoon :) Best when served chilled on same day. Also does great over night.

I'm going to include a picture here to show you the consistency to be achieved. I am not a food photographer so this makes the salad look less than appetizing...but please don't let it stop you from making it. My salad also looks darker than most because I add extra cinnamon.

 

 

Finally, I wanted to share this picture from our drive to church this morning. It was around 8 AM at the Winding Stairs gap in Franklin, NC. The clouds were low, so as we topped the mountain, we rose above the cloud. Big Sis kept asking if she could go walking on them.

 

Honestly, I would have loved to have seen Jesus step right out on them and join us for our Easter service :)

 

 

 

What a mighty God we serve!

 

Until next time,

Kat



Confession: a starting point...

I have a confession to make: if you have ever eaten something I have cooked, I have definitely licked the spoon. Some people are mentally high-fiving me right now ("you mean I'm not the only one?") while others are cringing with the thought that they may have eaten post-saliva'd food. Regardless of your reaction, I'm certainly not ashamed. 

When I contemplated beginning a blog, there were many names that ran through my head but I knew if I wanted to pit myself out in the open for readers to see, I wanted something that described me down to the core. The truth is life is all about savoring the small moments, and I am terrible at that. My mental day normally looks something like waking up, getting ready for the day, and then beginning a long list of mental worries about something that isn't happening today (chances are not tomorrow either and honestly maybe not ever). While in the course of my day, I feel like I fly on autopilot because while I'm living in the present, my thoughts are in another dimension. So much of my day goes by without me ever stopping to "savor" what is happening right at that moment.  My students make new connections, my daughters gain a new word or build new toddler-world concepts, my husband researches and successfully tackles a new project, and me? I'm in left field only catching small tidbits of what is really going on.

So back to the blog title: God is using moment after moment in my life to remind me that each moment of my day is worth savoring, and each worry that I have is not worth a lick (pardon the pun). In cooking terms, you could say I have been living life waiting for my recipe to finish but never stopping to enjoy the ingredients on their own, never watching the transformation of the ingredients into something new, never smelling the aroma along the way... Just waiting for the oven timer to ding so I can look at my creation and critique it. 

That's so not me (at least not in the kitchen). I snack on the ingredients from the first one to the last, and constantly lick the spoon along the way. Now we can handle the unhealthy calorie contents of this habit in another post, but as for now, I'm claiming this as a goal for my daily life: I want to stop and 'taste' every moment of every day. I want to quit worrying about the end product and better enjoy the process.

I think that David was on to something when he penned this verse: 
Psalm 34:8 O taste and see that the Lord is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

God's goodness isn't only seen in the end product of situations, but also in the midst of them. How He must crave for us to look at every moment of our daily 'recipes' and taste His goodness instead of droning mindlessly to the end of a situation. Taking refuge in God means that we can trust that the end product will be fine regardless of our worries, so why not taste his goodness along the way?

So, thus the title: Spit Cooks Out.
I'm challenging myself to throw worries to the wind and do some tasting along the way. Life is too good to ignore the simple flavors.

I apologize in advance for any spit you may encounter if I ever cook for you, but please be understanding in knowing that I have enjoyed the little blessings along the way.

So, be a little bold. Do some tasting of your own. A few licks certainly won't hurt.

Until next time,
Kat