Oh Strawberry, How I Love You!

Know what's about to be in season??

Strawberries!! One of our favorites. I'm always glad to get to February. .after a winter full of bananas, apples, and oranges. .it's nice to have another affordable fruit to enjoy!! Our grocery store has them on sale this week for about $1.25 a quart. I thought that I would celebrate and share one of our favorite springtime side dishes. . .

Honey Lime Fruit Toss!

Even though there is lime juice in the recipe, I have never used real limes in the salad before now. These huge mamas were 10 cents apiece last week too. .and Jeremy has been enjoying them in his water. But in a pinch. .

In fact. .after I had washed and cut up the strawberries. .I started to see that THE children had completely decimated my fruit supply. I generally use kiwi for the green fruit. .gone! My backup is usually green grapes (I had purchased both). .gone, GONE! My last resort was to use thinly sliced lime. Additionally. .as if that wasn't maddening enough. .The recipe takes a can of mandarin oranges. As I bent down and turned my lazy susan to the fruit section. .a flashback of 5 orange cans seen on the coffee table with forks extruding from them last week. .gave me a knot in my stomach. .and not surprisingly. .there were no oranges to be found either. .No worries though. .because sliced peaches are roughly the same color. .and I found 2 cans of those!

So today. .

I share with you a recipe that was completely remade Saturday with ingredients that I had on hand. .the original recipe is posted here. .but you'll observe only a few of the ingredients in my finished photo!!

You win some. .and you lose some. .

Although this loss was still pretty tasty!!

Hope you've got some fresh strawberries in a grocery store near you!!

Happy Valentines Day!!

Honey Lime Fruit Toss

20 oz can pineapple chunks, reserve juice

11 oz mandarin oranges, drained

2 cups sliced fresh strawberries

2 medium firm bananas, ¼ inch slices

2-3 kiwi fruit, peeled, halved, and sliced

2 Tbsp lime juice

1 Tbsp honey

Drain pineapple, reserving ¼ cup juice.  Set juice aside.  Combine the fruit in a large bowl.  In small bowl combine pineapple juice, lime juice and honey.  Pour over fruit and toss to coat.  I sometimes substitute green grapes for the kiwi fruit. Oh shoot. .sometimes I substitute all the fruit. .but DON'T substitute the juice. .that would just be wrong!