Friday Feature: Six Ways to Stay Cool with Fruit

The heat wave that has swept the nation has most of us thinking about how to remain cool. This is on my mind today as the high temperature in Detroit is expected to reach 100 degrees. With the exception of taking my mom to therapy in the morning twice this week, I have remained in my cool, air-conditioned house. And I thank God for my cool house because powerful storms this week knocked out power for many surrounding neighborhoods and they are feeling the heat. But if you have been blessed to still have power you might want to try my six ways to stay cool with fruit:

Cold Fruit—The most basic way to keep cool is simply to eat cold fruit. My family has been enjoying watermelon and pineapple mixed as a salad. I have added to my mix blueberries and cantaloupe and sometimes strawberries. I love how these taste together. At the end of my bowl I have wonderful fruit juice.

Natural fruit juice—You don’t have to wait until you get to the end of your bowl to drink fruit juice. In fact, to have cold fruit juice you can put the cold fruit in your juicer or blender and have a tall glass of freshness without refined sugar and other unnecessary additives. Use fruits with a lot of water to create a juice. Use these along with the softer ones, like banana, mango and papaya, for smoothies.

Smoothies—I make these almost daily for my boys and me. Their favorite is Mango-Strawberry-Banana with honey. I put these and about five ice cubes in the blender for a luscious treat anytime of the day. I even use frozen strawberries that I buy or freeze myself to add to the drink’s refreshing coolness.

Frozen fruit—Frozen fruit is not just for my smoothies; I like to eat them. My favorite is blueberries that tend to melt in my mouth. If I let my frozen strawberries sit at room temperature for a couple of minutes I eat those, too. Otherwise they are too dense to bite. My friend Carla loves frozen grapes. Frozen raspberries are a nice treat, too.

Frozen fruit ice cream—One treat that I love that sends chills throughout my body is ice cream. I just can’t eat it whenever I want because I don’t like the taste of, and even if I did I refuse to buy, cheap ice cream. Cheap ice cream has high fructose corn syrup and a bunch of other ingredients that I can’t pronounce and have no idea why they are in ice cream. When I buy ice cream I am eating Haagen-Dazs or some equivalent that only has cream, milk, sugar, eggs and a truly natural flavor. But with that ice cream being high in fat and cholesterol, I opt for frozen fruit. I like to freeze a banana, a ½ cup of chopped up mango and ½ cup of pineapple and then blend them with a little orange juice to give them that ice cream consistency. I get a sweet treat without the cholesterol and fat we all need to avoid.

Fruit juice popsicles—I wonder what natural fruit juice would taste like as popsicles. My boys and I pour bottled juice in ice trays to make popsicles so I think I’ll try juicing some fruit and freezing it to make popsicles. I can’t imagine that these won’t be good.

I hope you try or continue to use these methods to stay cool this summer or for a healthy treat anytime during the year. These have refreshed me and I hope they refresh you. Tell me; in what ways do you keep or plan to keep cool with fruit?