To Everything There Is a Season

Oftentimes during winter, I'll find myself working so hard to keep warm with teas, soups and the like that I will up and forget to have any items from my favorite food group - fruit.

This is horrendous. Why? Well, to start out with, as I previously mentioned, it is my favorite.

Fruit is also a stupendous source of a plethora of vitamins and minerals that provide all sorts of benefits to our bodies.

fruit ice cubes are always fun and a great way to store leftover fruit before it goes bad - put 1 unit (i.e. one raspberry, a couple blueberries, a slice of kiwi, etc) in your ice cube mold and fill with your favorite liquid (water, lemonade, orange juice, etc) and freeze. they make grown-up drinks sophisticated and flirty.

Contrary to common belief, fruit does abound in the winter as well, and yes, even outside of the frozen food section. In season, you will find banana, pomegranate, apple, pear, kiwi, and clementines to name a few.

Down here in Texas, we also have strawberries which you may recall top my absolute favorite food list where they have stood, in all their sweet and pink glory since the tender age of two. They tie with artichokes, but this is a post about fruits and not vegetables, so onward we go.

"Why buy in season when my local Whole Foods carries all fruit year round?", you may wonder. There are so many reasons. To cut right down to it, buying in season will save you loads o' dinero. It will also taste better because as you would imagine (if you're the imagining sort), anything grown in its preferred season will grow better and in this case, tastier.

My personal favorite reason to buy fruit in season attests to the cleverness of Mother Nature. The particular vitamins in the particular fruits you purchase in season provide benefits that are of particular interest to you during that time...particularly.

For example, clementine, kiwi, pear and apple are all extraordinary sources for vitamin C. And if you, like me, are serenaded by the orchestra of coughing and sneezing about this time of year, you'll note that vitamin C is crucial come winter to stave off the dreadful common cold.

One way to take advantage of the variety of winter fruits is a jazzed up fruit salad. Take any fruit you have lying around the house and chop it into bite-sized pieces. Put it all in a bowl, add cinnamon to taste, one teaspoon of fresh mint, lemon and lime juice to drizzle but not drown.

2 1/2 cups of grape, banana, apple, blueberry, kiwi, clementine, strawberry with the juice of 1/2 a lemon, 1/2 a lime, 1 tsp fresh mint and approximately 1 tbs cinnamon - it's even better next day after everyone has had time to get to know each other, get married, and procreate all sorts of yumminess