Hey friends!

Happy half-way-through-the-week! Yesterday, part of my workout involved the first in my August Summer Sizzler Challenge, and are my legs ever feeling those jumping lunges this morning!! Anyone else done it yet? I think I’ve completed this routine about 8 times over the past month and it’s not getting much easier… although I’m pleased to announce that the jumping lunges really do get more bearable with time!

This week’s Try Something New Tuesday is a very fruity, juicy one, so let’s get going!

1. Recipe of the Week: This week’s recipe is one that my health coaching newsletter subscribers received a few weeks ago as part of the July issue. I absolutely love it, and have made it more times than I can count this month. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll not be surprised when I tell you that it’s a salad.

How much do I love it? Enough to call it Angela’s Favourite Summer Berry Salad. It’s bursting with juiciness from the berries, and the walnuts provide a hefty amount of healthy omega-3 fats and vitamin E, both of which are great for your skin and preventing heart disease.

I was tempted to use one of my lovely fancy shmancy vinegars to dress things up, but if paying $15ish for a bottle of balsamic isn’t really your thang, no worries. I’ve got a substitute for you! This vinaigrette is a simple puree of strawberries, regular (cheap) balsamic, and a little olive oil. Throw ‘em in the blender, puree, and a few seconds later, you’ve got yourself a fruity balsamic. Enjoy!

2. Mango Nectarines. These are another fruit hybrid that I came across, and I just had to try them because as you saw in my last recap of all things new, I’m a big fan of the pit fruits this summer. They resemble the yellow plums I bought a few weeks ago, but don’t taste like plums at all.

Texture-wise, this felt like a nectarine, but the flesh was a deep, rich yellow just like a mango. They seemed to bruise really easily so I tried to keep them away from anything else in the fridge crisper so that they’d still look nice and cute when I used them yesterday.

Just like perfectly ripened peaches, the mango nectarines came off the stone really easily. This was lovely, because I can’t stand the feeling of stringy mango bits stuck in my teeth after trying my best to suck all of the flesh off of the pit!

So how exactly are mango nectarines made? According to this source…

The Mango nectarine was developed in the late 20th century by fruit grower, David Kamada of Ito Fruit Company in Reedley, California…. Mango nectarines do not actually have any mango parentage, rather they are the natural hybrid result of crossing two heirloom pale-skinned nectarine cultivars that occurred as budsports on red-skin nectarine trees within the same season. Budsports are rare occurrences, a single tree branch producing a mutation of a new fruit or a fruit of another era. A nectarine known as Honeykist is often mislabeled as a mango nectarine, though they are a completely different nectarine.

Taste-wise, this wee fruit tasted much more like a nectarine than a mango, which I suppose is intuitive since the above info says that they don’t actually have any “mango parentage”. Since I’ve been incorporating fruit into many main courses lately, I figured this one would be fun to put in a salsa.

In the mix was the following ingredients:

• 2 small pitted and diced mango nectarines
• 1/2 large jalapeno pepper
• about 1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 5 diced cherry tomatoes

After testing the salsa by eating a few tablespoons straight out of my mixing bowl, the rest of it went on top of last night’s chicken salad.

Most of the jalapeno seeds were left in the mix, so this was a pretty hot one. However, the mango nectarine was really, really juicy so the final product was a nice spicy-sweet salsa that required a good gulp of water every so often to put out the fire!

So tell me….

• Have you seen any strange hybrid fruits at the market or in grocery stores lately? Tried any?
• What’s your favourite nut to add to salads? I absolutely love walnuts, but almonds and toasted pecans are close seconds!

Psst – I’m getting ready to send out the August edition of my health coaching newsletter early next week, so if you haven’t signed up to receive it yet, you can subscribe here. It’s totally free and you’ll get a dose of inspiration delivered straight to your inbox every month. Don’t miss it!