Summer Salad Recipe

Summer, the smell of sunscreen and a combination of barbecued steak fills your lungs and you can hear the swishing of the waves of the nearby ocean or lake, and you can feel the heat turning your body into a tan with freckles appearing on your nose. The air is filled with laughs of children playing outside and the sound of suburban men opening up beers with the click and hiss as they chat with their buddies while standing by the barbecue. Women are enjoying their fruity cocktails while sitting down in their summer hats. Dogs happily chase their tails or their favorite toy as a bike goes by ringing a bell. This is what summer is to me(at least one version of it). Another version of summer is sitting by the campfire singing songs the the guitar roasting marshmallows and staying up late eating smores and then later admiring the stars and falling asleep to whispers of goodnight (that would be the second version of a great summer).

I love eating food. I love the taste of a steak and the sweetness of a marshmallow. These are the summer foods that I enjoy, yet there is one food, which I happen to enjoy more during the summer and that is a fruit salad. The coolness of a melon is surprisingly exactly what you need. Thinking of a good summer recipe can be very challenging. After all there are just so many good things out there like popsicles and ice cream. Don’t forget about the hamburgers and steaks. Nothing says summer more than fresh fruit on a hot summer’s day. It is easy to make on a lazy Saturday afternoon and it is something light and easy to eat when you are too hot to eat anything. Do you want an easy recipe? Here it is…

What you will need is a large bowl and a large spoon to load up on nature’s dessert. You will need a box of raspberries, a box of blueberries, a box of blackberries, a box of strawberries, 2 mangoes and 4 kiwis, half a pineapple, one lime and one lemon. 2/3 of a cup of orange juice, lemon zest, lime zest and 4 tablespoons of either lime juice or lemon juice. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and ⅓ cup of brown sugar. To start, combine ⅔ cups of orange juice with ⅓ cup of brown sugar and lemon and lime juice in a pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for five minutes until thickened. Once the mixture has been thickened add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and set aside. It should start to smell like summer in your kitchen.

Wash all the fruit thoroughly. Once washed and rinsed, cut the pineapple into cubes avoiding the core, next cube the mangoes. Don’t hesitate to try the fruit on its own…after all you need to poison test it.

Layer the salad in this order: mango, pineapple, raspberries, blueberries, black berries and top with strawberries. Next, you can pour the cooled mixture on the salad and put it in the fridge for three hours, then it is ready to serve! There you go! you have a fresh salad to eat or instead of making the sauce, you can substitute it with Vanilla yogurt and mix the salad together and put in the fridge for two hours before serving. Both are very healthy to eat and both are equally as good. This is such a great dessert or just a nice summer snack, it is great for picnics and maybe eating it by the pool or the beach.