12/24/08 Sweet Treats

Sweet Treats. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Well it's Christmas Eve and by the time tomorrow rolls around you will probably have had your fill of all the cakes, candies and who knows what else. Lizann Powers-Hammond is Food & Nutrition Educator with WSU Extension in the Tri-Cities and says don't overlook fruit. POWERS-HAMMOND: One of the interesting things with the holidays is people really focus on the meat part of a meal. The fruits and vegetables part of the meal often get overlooked but that's really a nice opportunity to add some color, some really a variety of tastes and some fun to meals. She says that a lot of people really don't look at fruit in the right way. They tend to look at it as a diet food. POWERS-HAMMOND: People think of eating them plain where they can really be incorporated into salads or dressed up to really creative and inventive. One of the real popular type salads out now are spinach and fruit combination salads. Mmm, yeah. Spinach & strawberry with a poppy seed dressing. But what about those last minute party ideas. POWERS-HAMMOND: Fruit kabobs are wonderful and people think of potlucks  oh what do I take? And fruit kabobs are great. You get little bamboo skewers and just string fruit on there and they look very elaborate and all you have done is put fruit on a skewer and it's not that time consuming, in fact kids love doing it. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. Oh, and Merry Christmas. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.