Fruity End

I'm way overdue on talking about the end of this challenge. Truth is, I fell off the wagon on the last two days and had cookies for dessert. Kinda bad. But I've learned a few things:

• It's way easier to eat fruit for dessert when it's right on your doorstep, hence days and days of raspberries.
• I really do like having a tart, juicy fruit like berries or pineapple for dessert, rather than something heavy like a banana. It seems more conducive to digestion.
• A wee cup of something is all I really need. Any more is just... ugh.

I think I will carry on with fruit for dessert at least half of the week from now on. I'm on vacation now, so I haven't been eating that well (snerk) but the fruit is part of a nice routine. I'm looking forward to trying out new fruits if and when they come available.

I have a new 30-day challenge in mind, but I think I'll wait until I get home to get it started!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Days 19 to 27

I know what you're thinking. She hasn't posted in a while. I bet she fell off the wagon. She's been eating cakes and pies and ice cream and is just too sheepish to say anything about it.

Well, no. Not exactly.

It's been stinking hot the last few weeks here, and I've basically had no appetite for anything after dinner except for a small bowl of raspberries or strawberries. And something interesting is happening to me.

I'm starting to really dislike cake.

Astonishing, given that I did actually have cake for dessert yesterday. It was good, but it really wasn't that happy in my tummy afterwards. It might be that it was just too much after an evening meal.

Or, maybe my tastebuds are actually changing.

Tonight, I had a small platter of ice cream and immediately regretted it. I chased it with some raspberries, but the season is pretty much over for them. I will have to find something else light and tasty and tart to have for dessert the next few days!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 18

It was an oven-hot day yesterday, so in the evening, I went out to water our vegetables. While I was standing there with the hose, I reached out and plucked one of our apples and munched on it while I watered the corn. I cheated a bit here and took this photo from my photo challenge, but I didn't take a picture of one last night.

I love fruit and veggies freshly picked. You get to taste them at their best, sugars still abundant, crisp and juicy and clean. My apples aren't waxy on the outside, and the flesh turns brown as soon as you bite into them, but they are among the best I've ever had!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 15, 16 & 17

The past two days have been uneventful on the fruit front. I continue to eat raspberries from the garden, my husband continues to pick them, and the birds continue to feast on them each day.

Today, I went to a country fair where there was an unbelievable amount of fresh fruit for purchase, and I came home with a large punnet of beautiful, beautiful blackberries. When I lived in Northern Ireland, these berries grew abundantly along the shoreline and on the hillsides of the Cave Hill on the bramble bushes next to where I worked. I used to go out regularly at lunch time to look for them, both to snack on them, as well as to cut the branches for our stick insects to eat (who knew they liked bramble?).

My dessert tonight was a delightful combo of colours: cultivated blackberries, huge next to my home-grown raspberries and strawberries. All delicious!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 13 & 14

Things are kind of stagnant on the fruit front. I'm still eating fruit for dessert (and enjoying it), but I've had raspberries for the last two days and I didn't really feel like taking photos of them over and over again.

Instead, I thought I'd share something that I found from someone I follow on Google+. It's an article all about wild and ancient fruit. I was so interested by it because I think I've finally found a picture of the elusive chico I had in the Philippines, but was never able to prove its existence. This is an image from this article of a fruit called masuku, and it looks just like the fruit I've been trying to describe for years. These ones are from Africa, but I'm very, VERY sure that's what I had at my grandmother's house.

Incidentally, I've also eaten a few of the fruits shown in this article while in the Philippines as well. My aunt considers it her duty to make sure I am aware of the fruits of my parents' childhood. The soursop shown there is called guyabano in the Philippines. I've eaten a version of the custard apple called atis. I'm glad to say I've never had the egg fruit, which is reputed to taste like chalky rotten eggs!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 12

I thought I'd take advantage of the cooler weather last night to make a batch of raspberry jam. It's always messy, hot work, and afterwards, I wasn't really feeling the fruity love. I decided to keep things simple and have some of the chopped up apples I put into the jam and a few raspberries on the side.

I don't eat a lot of apples, but it seems that I enjoy them much more when they are either fresh off the tree or cut into slices. The slices seem to change the apple from an obligation to a snack!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 11

I had bananas and honey for dessert last night. It's one of the simple things I often enjoy for breakfast. Honey that has not been overheated (as most commercially-produced honey is) has antibacterial properties. This is one of the things I eat when there's a cold going around at work (I know, colds are caused by viruses, but if I can kick the bacteria out, that's one less thing I have to work on!). I usually eat bananas and honey on toast, but that was a bit too much for dessert!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 10

Last night, I had yet another bowl of raspberries sitting in the kitchen, but I decided to change things up a bit and open a can of lychee.

Lychee is native to China, but my family eats regularly. It's similar to another fruit called longan that is readily found in the Philippines, which is probably why my family enjoys it. You can't buy it fresh where I live, but you can usually find it in Asian supermarkets in the city.

When it grows on the tree, it is covered by a reddish-pink, bumpy shell. By the time it makes it to overseas supermarkets, the shell is brown. To open them, you simply squeeze the shell until it splits, and then you peel the shell off. The fruit is white, fleshy and sticky. Inside is a shiny, black pit, the shape of an olive.

I had lychee and raspberries for dessert, but they didn't go well together. Too sweet and too tart, but it still worthwhile!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 8 & 9

I was out with friends last night at a barbecue. I didn't bring my camera along to take pictures of what I had for dessert (I figured that would be too weird, even though many of them know that I have this blog). I suppose that if I had brought along my camera, I would have behaved myself a bit more...

I DID have fruit (I have witnesses!). I had a very ripe apricot, some raspberries, and some pineapple... except the pineapple was mixed with lots of nice creamy stuff that I put on top of the slice of angel food cake I had. It sat nicely next to the monster cookie I had next. Yeah...

Tonight, to make up for my transgressions, I finished the last of the can of jackfruit I opened a few days ago, and topped it with more of my raspberries. It was still just as good as the cake I had last night, and probably won't haunt me later as I try to sleep like the cake did!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 6 & 7

I realized this morning that I forgot to post yesterday. It was my wedding anniversary, and I was busy making butter chicken and rice (yum!). I didn't forget about my dessert, which was another round of raspberries, this time in yogurt with almonds on top:

You might be wondering why I've been eating so many raspberries. If you missed my Take a Photograph Every Day challenge, you wouldn't have seen the picture of my raspberry bushes. They are a total mess (we are not very vigilant with weeding and trimming), but they are extremely prolific. We probably couldn't eat all the berries that grow out there, but we don't mind a little help, especially from helpers like this Cedar Waxwing. It sits there and watches while we pick berries. He doesn't seem to mind us there at all.

Tonight, I had another little bowl of berries, but this time, I also ate some of the strawberries we have in our garden as well. There is nothing so amazing as a freshly-picked strawberry. Wow, sweet! Yum! I thought I'd include that coaster in the picture, just because I picked them out and I think they're pretty:

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 5

Another round of raspberries. It's the season for them here, and we've got them coming out of our ears. I've got a couple of bags in the freezer that are destined to become raspberry tarts, once the weather cools down enough to make me want to use the oven. Until then, we'll be eating them every day in our cereal, in our salads, as raspberry vinaigrette, and for dessert. Not such a bad thing!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 4

I bought a can of jackfruit the other day in preparation for this challenge. This fruit is common in the Philippines and other tropical countries. In the Philippines, it is called langka. It looks similar to the infamous, stinky fruit called durian, but jackfruit doesn't stink at all. When you cut the fruit open, these yellow seed pods are what are harvested. They are sweet, with a soft, fibrous texture.

One of the reasons I like it so much is that it's one of my dad's favourite fruits. He often buys it from the market when he's in the Philippines visiting. I've never had it fresh, but he says it's even better, because it's not overly sweet like the canned version tends to be. The only problem with it is that it is exceedingly sticky, so you have to coat your knife with oil so that you can actually cut into it.

I also enjoy jackfruit shredded over halo-halo, which is a crushed ice treat made with milk, sugar, and other various things, like a jelly called gulaman, or tapioca balls called sago. It reminds me of summer as a child... mmm...

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 3

It probably doesn't look that good, but here's a bowl of sliced bananas and fresh raspberries tossed in some of the berry syrup I made the other day. Very tasty after a pork chop dinner!

Eat Fruit for Dessert: Day 2

I wanted ice cream tonight, but decided to make this instead. It's sort of a fruit smoothie/parfait made from frozen banana, frozen blueberries, fresh raspberries, and some orange juice, blitzed with a handblender, then layered with yogurt. I topped it with some berry syrup I made from the batch that I had yesterday, and a few fresh raspberries on top. It was a bit too much for me to finish, so I shared it (reluctantly) with my husband. Yum!

Eat Fruit For Dessert: Day 1

For the past few years, I've made a special effort to get my "5 a day." I'm usually pretty good at making sure there are plenty of fruits and vegetables in the house. I have no problems making sure I eat at least three servings of veggies a day, but for some reason, I don't seem to be able to remember to eat fruit each day. It might be a banana or a glass of juice, but that's about it.

It's not that I grew up in a household that didn't eat fruit. My family is from the Philippines, and like a lot of people from southeast Asian countries, they aren't really into cakes and cookies. My dad will always reach for a banana or some melon for dessert, without thought for a slice of cheesecake. My grandmother's house has a mango tree, several palms, a coconut tree, a guava tree, and a tree that bears a fruit called "chico," of which I've never seen anywhere else.

I thought that I might spend this month not eating dessert at all, but that just didn't seem much fun. So, since it's summer, and it's a good time to find fresh fruit, I thought I'd have some fruit for dessert each day.

This will be somewhat of a challenge, because I live in an area that gets most of its fruit off a truck, but if it was easy, well... it wouldn't be a challenge, would it?

This evening, I enjoyed a small bowl of raspberries from my garden and chokecherries from my friend's garden. We picked a couple of big freezer bag-fulls of the chokecherries today, and I thought I'd better eat a few before they went too soft. Yum!