Winter Fruit Salad

I’ve been battling a nasty little sinus infection for the past week. I swear, I’ve been sick for a full-blown month. Which is strange, because before this I hadn’t been sick in almost two years. I guess when it rains, it pours, huh?

I figured we needed some fresh Vitamin C in this household, so I bought a lot of fruits while I was at the grocery store yesterday. Not being one to leave well enough alone, I cut up said fruits and made myself a nice fruit salad. Here’s hoping it beefs up our immune system. Oranges, grapes, kiwi, lemon juice, and pineapple. All delectable little packets of natural immune booster (or so I hope).

I decided to sweeten the fruit salad with a weird sweetener I’ve had in the back of my pantry for a while now: sorghum syrup. I know, it sounds like something out of the 1800’s, and it kind of is. There’s a sorghum festival in a little town called Wewoka, Oklahoma, every year. I’ve never been, but this past year they sent a care package promoting the festival to my station.

Knowing I would be the only one to appreciate the cookbook and bottle of sticky sweet sorghum, I took them both home. It’s a pretty interesting little sweetener. It tastes like a cross between maple syrup and honey, with a dark brown color. The people of Wewoka would make it back in the day by harnessing two mules to a pole to turn the mill, which would crush the pulp of the sorghum cane to extract a sweet, yellow-green juice.

The juice is then put into a pan and cooked until it turns dark brown. Apparently, back in the day, pioneers who settled Oklahoma preferred sorghum syrup over maple syrup as their favorite sweetener.

I really like the taste of sorghum syrup, and hope you’re able to try it one day. If today isn’t that day, you can always use honey or agave nectar for this recipe instead. All you need is just a little bit to kick up the sweetness of this fruit salad.

Winter Fruit Salad

• Servings: 4-6
• Time: 10 mins
• Difficulty: Easy
• Print

A fruit salad full of citrus and tropical fruit to get you through the winter.

Ingredients

• 4 kiwis, peeled and sliced
• 2 cups red seedless grapes, sliced in half
• 2 cups cubed pineapple
• 5 clementine oranges, peeled and segmented
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 TBS. poppy seeds
• 2 TBS. sorghum syrup
• Mint, for garnish

Directions

1. In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, poppy seeds, and sorghum.
2. In a large bowl, combine kiwis, grapes, pineapple and oranges. Pour lemon-sorghum mixture over fruit and toss to coat. Top with chopped mint leaves.

Step-By-Step Instructions

In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, poppy seeds, and sorghum.

In a large bowl, combine kiwis, grapes, pineapple, and oranges. Pour lemon-sorghum mixture over fruit and toss to coat. Top with chopped mint leaves.