Tuesday, October 7, 2008

VeganMoFo: All the Leaves Are Brown

Not really. But since the tree in my front yard is shedding and the temperature is dropping, I decided to make the Fall Fruit Salad from Vegan Italiano by Donna Klein.


A few things about this fruit salad. First of all, I highly encourage you to get incredibly contrasting colors. I thought I was doing this...black grapes, pink apples (I can't remember what kind) and I believe those are bosc pears. However, once everything came together it looked pretty boring.

There are two issues I have with this fruit salad. First of all, there's not a whole lot going on texturally. Yes, the grapes and walnuts offer pop and crunch. But if you use ripe pears and ripe banana (as the recipe calls for it) then it's pretty mushy. Not in a bad way...but I think I really would have preferred crisp pears.

Secondly, it's a fruit salad with sugar. Granted, it's only a tablespoon...but that just irks me. I don't think there was nearly enough lemon juice to warrant sugar.

Overall, I felt it left something to be desired. It's nothing more than a mediocre bowl of fruit with walnuts in it. This is the only "meh" recipe I've had from this book so I still urge you to get it.

I also posted in Lone Star Plate about a food memory from my high school days. You can check it out here. And I'll leave with a pic to entice you over to the Texas blog.
Senora Pritts' Easy Black Beans served with fried plantains

4 comments:

Leigh said...

I hear you with the sugar in the fruit salad. It just doesn't make sense. But I really like Vegan Italiano overall. Especially the soup selection.

Bex said...

I love Vegan Italiano (I haven't tried this recipe though). I haven't cooked from it in ages though. There was a solid couple weeks where I cooked from little but this book.

Anonymous said...

I think the salad looks very pretty and the fruit combination sounds great, but sugar and mushy bananas is something I would definitely not put into my salad.

erica said...

hell yeah! Fruit salad is a lost art.