No fruit?!?!

Who knew that I would cause a little uproar by saying that we don't eat fruit around here! I guess there are a lot of fruit lovers out there. The reason that we don't eat much fruit around here is two-fold. First, we just really are not passionate about it. Z actively does not like most fruits and D and I are apathetic. Actually, I should clarify. I am apathetic and D doesn't do the grocery shopping, so I get to choose. This leads to the second reason that we don't eat much fruit...the cost. If we were flush with cash (or heck, if we even had an income) I might be more tempted to buy some apples and oranges. Sadly, those are just indulgences that we aren't really able to afford right now. I would rather sink my cash into high quality ingredients that I know we are going to make good use of than into snacks, and a lot of fruit falls into that snack category around here.

Lest you think we don't eat any fruit at all, let me clarify even a little more. We hardly eat any fruit in the fall, winter and spring. We do make an exception for persimmons, but I will only buy the really perfectly ripe ones, and they are only in season for a short amount of time.

All of this flies out the window in two distinct situations though: when we are in Hawaii and when it is summer.

My father-in-law has a farm in Hawaii, up in a little town called Hawi. We are fortunate enough to get to go there for some lengthy chunks of time and while we are there we eat fruit daily! We indulge in mangoes, papayas, passion fruits, bananas, pineapples...all from his farm. Nothing beats a ripe mango that is freshly picked from a tree right outside the breakfast pavilion.

We do go a little fruit crazy in the height of summer as well. D threatens to plan entire vacations around the locations of choice blackberry patches in Northern California, just so that he can get his fill of his favorite berry. We also enjoy the seemingly endless supply of organic apricots that are grown on the land that we are fortunate enough to live on. And we can make extremely quick work of bags of peaches and entire flats of strawberries from the farmer's market. The only downside of living in a place where such amazing local, organic fruit is available is that we are spoiled by being able to enjoy these delicacies at the peak of their ripeness and flavor. Downside, you say? How is that a downside? Well, now we just can't convince ourselves to buy any of those amazing summer fruits when they are not at their peak, so the window of our fruit eating is pretty short lived.

So there you have it...I guess I should have been a little less strong in my assertion that we barely eat any fruit. I realize in retrospect that I would have worded the post differently if I were writing in July or August...I probably would have said that we enjoy specific ripe, organic fruits that are in season. We mostly consider them to be dessert and special treats, and we fully relish their brief appearance in our diet each year.

Does that help?

Okay, on to tonight's dinner!

Tonight was Taco Tuesday Wednesday. We were going to have our tacos last night but then we couldn't pass up the gorgeous piece of fish that E. bestowed upon us so I switched the menus up a little bit. I think I have written about our tacos before...they are a favorite, super easy meal of ours. Tonight our tacos included:

-Whole Foods organic blue corn taco shells
-organic pico de gallo
-freshly made guacamole (smashed avocados, minced onion, lemon juice and salt)
-organic black beans
-our favorite cabbage slaw (for the recipe see this post: http://etes-vouspret.blogspot.com/2011/02/friday-night.html)
-Trader Joe's Quattro Formaggio shredded cheese
-Fantastic Foods vegetarian taco filling. This is a just-add-water soy based filling that is mighty tasty.

Aside from the slaw, which I made this afternoon in about 10 minutes, the whole dinner took less than 20 minutes to prepare...and during that time I also did some dishes, set the table and showered my kiddo while the taco filling, beans and shells were heating up.

I gobbled down a taco and then made myself a huge salad with the leftovers.

I have now made that slaw at least 5 times since New Year's and we still are nowhere near sick of it. Every time I make tacos they come out a little bit differently but they are always satisfying and incredibly tasty.

I will admit that one of the reasons that I make them so often has to do with Z. Tacos were a huge challenge for him for a long time...he couldn't figure out how to pick them up and eat them, and on top of that he was unsure of how he felt about many of the components involved in them, particularly the salsa and the guac. But week after week I offer them up and week after week he makes a little more progress with them. Tonight was a big night for him with his taco eating...not only did he accept guacamole on them but he also ate his taco completely by himself with no adult assistance. We have come a long way from him only wanting cheese in the tacos and crushing them to pieces or spilling all their guts out on the second or third bite, so I was really pleased. Not that I am stubborn or anything.

I will have a new recipe for you tomorrow night, an homage to our visit a couple of years ago to India.