The Chew is having a contest to “find the next Weight Watchers chef”. Last week on the show, two contestants for the Weight Watchers contest made breakfast recipes and my favorite was “Seasonal Fruit Salad with Yogurt Sauce” by Lisa Fontanesi. My fruit salad ended up quite different from the one on The Chew, but I wanted to let you know where the inspiration came from.
I like the idea of using seasonal fruits but there’s a small window when seasonal citrus fruit and berries are available at the same time. When I shopped for my fruit salad, I found some great citrus but the berries were all from Mexico and really expensive. I used frozen berries instead.
I added walnuts to this salad, on my sister’s suggestion. I thought it sounded so good, considering the fact there’s apple in this salad and walnuts and apples are a match made in heaven.
The biggest change to the inspiration recipe; honey instead of artificial sweetener. There goes my chance at becoming a Weight Watchers chef! But hey, honey is supposed to be healthy, right? And, there isn’t a lot of honey in one serving. I loved the yogurt this way, it’s a terrific combination, the sweet honey with the tangy yogurt.
The inspiration recipe included red grapefruit. I love red grapefruit, however, I found it too bitter for my taste, in this recipe. I replaced it with additional oranges. This fruit salad recipe is great because you can interchange the ingredients according to what’s available and what fits your taste.
INGREDIENTS
- ½ cup plain greek nonfat yogurt
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 3 large oranges
- 1 mandarin orange or tangerine, if mandarins are not available
- 1 banana
- 1 pear
- 1 apple I used Honeycrisp
- 1 cup berries I used frozen strawberries, use any berries you like, use fresh if available
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
INSTRUCTIONS
- In a small bowl, combine yogurt, vanilla and honey. Refrigerate until serving.
- Peel the citrus and remove all the skin and white pith around the fruit, reserving the remaining peel to squeeze juice from. Cut the orange segments free, breaking them into bite size pieces. Place orange and mandarin pieces into bowl. Squeeze the juice from what’s left of the fruit into the bowl. The juice will stop the rest of the fruit from turning brown.
- Core and cut the apple and pear, removing seeds. Cut into bite size chunks and add to bowl.
- Peel and slice the banana and if berries are large, cut in bite size pieces. Place banana and berries in bowl with other fruit. Stir in the walnuts.
- Divide among small serving dishes or glasses and top with yogurt sauce.
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