Fruit, fuel for our body

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If your luxury car needed high octane fuel, would you fill the tank with alternative cheaper fuel? I am sure the answer is no, even if fuel prices are rising day by day.

God created us and gave us a mouth where we should put high quality fuel in it so that we can live a healthy life and instead of eating healthy we fill our body with junk and then have to ran to the doctors to see what is wrong with us. We get diabetes, high blood pressure or cholesterol and with other substance it can form plaque, a thick, hard deposit that can clog those arteries. This condition is known as atherosclerosis. A clot (thrombus) that forms near this plaque can block the blood flow to part of the heart muscle and cause a hear attack. If a clog blocks the blood flow to part of the brain, a stroke will result.

I don’t want to scare you but eating fruit and vegetables is absolutely necessary and as my children are not really fans of fruit, I try at least with a certain disguise to trick them into eating some.

When I saw this month’s challenge in the Great Cooks Community I was thrilled that I discovered a new way to make fruit recipes. The challenge was “grilled fruit” and as I had never thought of grilling fruit before I was more than happy to give it a try. The only cooked fruit I made up to now is apples, pears or quince, baked in the microwave for a few minutes with sugar and cinnamon and many kinds of preserved fruit, which we call spoon sweets in Greece and fruit compote.

Grilled Fruit

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Grilling time: 20 minutes

Makes 10 skewers

Ingredients

• 2 peaches
• 2 apples
• 1 banana
• 2 spoonfuls of brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon of cinnamon

Directions

1. Wash and peel fruit.Cut into bite sizes and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
2. Thread fruit onto metal skewers, alternating types of fruit for a colorful presentation; fill the skewer just enough to fit in your griller.
3. Place skewers in the hot grill pan and grill each side for 10 minutes. Turn only once and let them cool a little before serving.

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Last Tuesday I went to the farmers’ market and as usual I bought a lot of fruit.

Cherries, pears, apricots, peaches, nectarines and melons. Imagine all this fruit had to be consumed quickly as not all of them can last for many days. The cherries, apart from a handful I used for the salad, the rest two kilos were made into a spoon sweet, which I will post soon. Perfect on top of desserts. The pears and the melons will be the last to be consumed as they can be kept for a week in the refrigerator.

Healthy Fruit Salad

• A handful of pitted cherries
• 2 – 3 slices of melon, depending on the size of the melon, cut into bite sizes
• 2 nectarines
• 2 peaches
• 2 bananas
• 6 apricots
• 2 – 3 spoonfuls of Greek Thyme Honey
• 1/2 cup of Commandaria Wine or red sweet dessert wine of your preference
• cinnamon to sprinkle on top if they are served without the yoghurt (optional)
• Greek strained yoghurt

Directions:

Before peeling and cutting fruit make sure that they are cold and cut them into bite sizes. Mix all ingredients, and serve with Greek low fat strained Yoghurt.

Although I bought the fruit on Tuesday and today is only Thursday I needed to used these fruit immediately as they would not last any longer.

Last week I made watermelon spoon sweet and there was more syrup that I needed to fill in the jars, so I stored it in the refrigerator thinking that I could wet my sponge cakes with it. I also had some leftover syrup from sour cherries spoon sweet, so I emptied two jars (about 2 – 3 glasses) of the syrup in a sauce pan and put it on the heat.

Simultaneously I peeled the fruit and cut it into sized bites.

When the syrup started to boil, I lowered the heat and crashed the seeds of 6 cardamom pods and added them to the syrup as well as 1 piece of a cinnamon stick about an inch long.

I added the fruit to the syrup and simmered them for twenty minutes.

Fruit Compote

Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 7 apricots
• 3 pears
• 2 peaches
• 2 nectarines

Additional ingredients for serving

• 1 whipping cream 35%
• 2 spoonfuls of icing sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
• 1 low fat yoghurt with tropical fruit

Directions:

1. Whip the cream until stiff. In a separate bowl empty the low fat yoghurt and add 3 spoonfuls of whipped cream and whip them together.
2. The amount of whipping cream added is up to you.
3. Serve with a scoop of ice cream, compote with syrup (at room temperature) and some yoghurt.

Kopiaste and Kali Orexi!

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