Animal Writings

• Artfully arrange some fresh fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table, or wherever you're most likely to eat meals or snacks. If you make the fruit more inviting and accessible, you may find yourself reaching for it more often.


• Always add fruit to cereal. Second choice: buy cereal with fruit already in it. The two choices aren't mutually exclusive. Add fruit to oatmeal and other hot cereal as well as to cold cereal. One option to consider here, which may give you more flexibility, is dried fruit.


• Fruit makes a nice topping for pancakes, waffles, and French toast. You can still use maple syrup and other toppings along with the fruit. One nice variation is escalloped apples or apple pie filling with a little cinnamon sprinkled on top.


• Fruit works surprisingly well in salads. Sections of mandarin oranges or red grapefruit (or both) go great on a spinach salad. Dried cherries or cranberries go well with most green salads. Try other combinations.


• Dried fruit mixes are a nice "pop a handful in the mouth" snack. They last a long time, and they often include fruits like papaya and apricot that I'm guessing you don't buy fresh very often.


• Bring some fruit to work. If you forget, and you work in a city, you can buy a piece of fruit from the street vendor or the little shop in the ground floor of your building. You can even buy a fruit cup at many Starbucks or other coffee shops.


• Bring fruit on trips and on hikes. Dried fruit may work better than fresh if you're going a long distance.


• Although it's not the cheapest or most environmentally responsible route, consider buying fruit for which the manual work—peeling, slicing, and so forth—has already been done, to make eating fruit easier. There are lots of choices here, such as orange and/or grapefruit sections, apple slices, and canned fruit. Most grocery stores now sell a variety of cut-up fruit, including watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, pineapple, kiwi, and strawberries. They typically sell combinations as well, which may include slices of larger fruit like melons and pineapple mixed with blueberries, raspberries, or other berries. Although you pay a little extra, you sort of get the best of both worlds here: Fresh fruit and zero preparation. Don't buy more than you'll eat in the next two days.


• Stop at farm stands. There's something about the freshness and color of the fruit on the stand that makes them more irresistible. In autumn, there's nothing like the burst of flavor you get from a crisp red, gold, or green apple right off the farm. But other fruit from farm stands, at any time of year, tastes great also. Like peaches in summer. OMG. Plus you'll be helping out a local farmer.


• Pretty much everything in the last bullet point also applies to farmers markets. Most areas have them.


• The easiest fruit salad in the world: Slice some bananas, slice some strawberries, add a drained can of Mandarin orange sections. Optional: Drizzle with agave nectar (a low-glycemic alternative to honey) and/or a bit of cinnamon. If you have any grapes or dried fruit around, they'll probably blend in fine. If this is dessert we're talking about, you can mix in some sweetened coconut shreds that you buy in the baking section.


• Consider smoothies. Make them or buy them. Go for the non-dairy versions. I prefer straight juice smoothies. But at some chains that sell dairy smoothies, such as Robek's, you can specify non-dairy and they'll substitute soy sherbet for the dairy product—and neither you nor anyone for whom you buy them will notice the difference.


• A lot of products have fruit in them, some more than others. Applesauce comes in a dozen different varieties these days, including Granny Smith, cinnamon, unsweetened, pear-apple, strawberry-apple, and peach-apple. Fruit pies are often loaded with fruit. Cranberry sauce is mostly cranberries. Well, with a lot of sugar, too, to offset the tartness. There's always fruitcake. These products aren't a substitute for fresh fruit, and some are loaded with unhealthy ingredients, but you get partial credit.


• At many sit-down restaurants, you can ask for a fruit dessert if it's not on the menu. If you're at an upscale place, see if you can get fresh berries with some liqueur like Irish Mist or Cointreau. Delectable. In general, a fruit dessert (and maybe a cup of coffee or tea) is a nice ending to a sumptuous repast that won't make you feel bloated or regretful.

Labels: diet, fruit, salads