Fruit Salad with Mint

I did everything right.

I’m talking about this past spring’s garden prepreation. 

Till 30 by 20 swath to compliment my 10 raised beds.  Check

Add plenty of compost.  Check

Irrigate with the use of soaker hoses.  Check

Cover for weed control.  Check

Add beautiful mulch to enhance garden’s appearance. Check

It seems I forgot one thing. That was to install a large scale solar powered outdoor de-humidifier to compensate for the 40 day and 40 night deluge of rain we have had.  Nope, forgot about that one.  In a related story, I did come across this while in a Lowes parking lot the other day.

Thank god, huh? And to think Ford built such a thing.  I immediately tried to get in but found the doors to be locked.  How am I to begin to repopulate the world if I can’t even get in this ark?  And room for only five?  It looks like only two species are going to survive this calamity and that fifth being is probably going to become dinner and if I have any say in this it’s going to be a hog.   This ark did have a sunroof, so giraffes and llamas are still in play here. 

Speaking of my garden, the only thing flourishing right now is the string grass and mint.  Since I have no culinary need for the former, I have been picking the hell out my spearmint, chocolate, and grapefruit mint plants.  What for you might ask?  Well morning fruit salad.  Whereas my strawberry plants are a year away and my blackberries and raspberries are as pissed at all the rain as I am, I am resigned to buying the fruit like most every other schmuck. The mint is a nice touch.

This is a simple dish, folks.  I'll show you how to section a grapefruit just to complicate it some. 

 

1 large grapefruit

1 cup fresh raspberries

1 cup blueberries

6 strawberries

1 half fresh pineapple

1 cup fresh mint  

That's my cast of characters. Needless to say, you can play around with any combination you like. It's nice to have the grapefruit simply because  he will drop some nice juice to this beauty.  Let's get busy sectioning him for this cooking lesson.

Use a serrated knife ( aka good bread knife ) and cut the ends from the grapefruit. 

Now let's remove the outer skin. Using the same knife, cut in a concave motion trying ( hoping and praying ) not to remove too much flesh. 

Don't sweat it, tho its hot outside you will get better with practice. You should have something looking like this.

See the vertical membranes?  All we are going to do is cut on each side of them and release each grapefruit section. 

Doesn't that just beat the hell out of those grapefruit spoons?  Remember to hold the whole over the bowl to capture the juices while you cut.  Time to attack the pineapple.  Cut it in half and use the same serrated knife and cut more or less the same way you did for the grapefruit. 

 You want to cut those thorn looking guys out of the party here.  I tend to leave the last bit of remnants of them just because I hate losing the fruit and I can deal with a little bit. You choose. 

When you finished, it should look something like this.

Pretty handsome guy I would say. Head to your garden or back deck planter and pick some of this

That's my grapefruit mint coupled with the chocolate mint.  Looks likes they are getting it on.  Not really, it's just mint doing it's mint thing and growing!  So plant some, it's still not too late. This plant will be singing green while the others are gone so do this now if you haven't done so already. Pick some and chop finely like so

Add this to your bowl of fruit

Toss gently as we don't want to mash the berries. As good as this might look, there is no way to describe the taste of this freshness in the morning.  

This is a a good morning.