There is a true art to making fruit salad on the fly. In the last year, I have made more huge bowls of fruit salad than I have ever made (o even eaten) in my life. A fruit salad is by no means complicated to make; you only need to be able to cut up a ton of fruit into bite size pieces. And it’s a great way to encourage kids (and adults) to eat more fruit. I often make fruit salad when certain fruits have been in our fridge for a while and just aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Most fruits I love by themselves — but there is something really special about the variety available in fruit salad that makes any old fruit more interesting

When you’re throwing together fruit salad with whatever you have around, you’ve got to create careful balance of fruits as well as consider the colors you’re using. There are few things more tasty than pineapple and mango mixed together — but it looks a little boring when you get down to it. Throwing in berries, watermelon, or red grapes will help make things a bit more lively. You can put just about any fruit into a fruit salad, from papaya to apples to bananas. So will hold up for a few days (apples) while others are better when added right before the fruit salad is eaten (bananas).

Fruit salad is also quite versatile. It can be easily taken along in lunches or used as a snack during the day. You can also toss a handful of fruit salad int0 your cereal in the morning or top off a bowl of fruit salad with yogurt and granola for a nice crunch. By the way, none of these things are slow carb friendly and I’m having fruit cravings just thinking about all this, but I’ve also knocked my body fat down about 6% in just 3 weeks so I’m not going to totally give up on the lifestyle just yet.

All you need to do with each fruit is cut it up until it’s bite-size (and remove any seeds or peel as necessary) — then throw it all into a bowl, mix it together and big in! The key is putting just about the same amount of each fruit into the bowl. For example:

• 1/2 large mango
• 1/3-1/2 pineapple (we can never have too much pineapple in ours)
• 1 apple
• 1 small bunch of grapes (about a fistful)
• 2 kiwis
• 1/4 cantaloupe or honey dew
• 1/2 pint strawberries or other berries
• 1 orange
• 1/4 of a small round watermelon

Here’s a few of our favorite fruit salad combinations.  So far, no combination we’ve made has ever turned out bad. So just try it out with whatever you have in your fridge!

• Mango, pineapple, strawberry, apple, oranges
• Mango, pineapple, red grape, banana
• Grape, apple, cantaloupe, orange
• Watermelon, mango, pineapple, strawberry