This is not a recipe. It’s simply a fruit salad.
However, it’s our own fruit salad, made the way we like it, with grandma Leda’s ‘secret’ ingredient. 😉

A fruit salad explains itself, it shouldn’t need to become a recipe, after all you just need to take fruit and cut it into pieces, and the fruit salad is ready. So, why am I writing a whole article just to talk about a fruit salad?

Well, I’m writing because I enjoy and have fun writing here, because we are greedy for our fruit salad and because I want to share its ‘secret’, and also because today I feel like saying a few words about grandma Leda, my mother-in-law. Since sometimes something about me and my family bounces into this blog… the fruit salad and grandma Leda’s secret ingredient fit perfectly today (no pun intended, don’t worry, no beans in this fruit salad! 😀 ).

Recently, grandma Leda fills our days quite a bit, with her almost 95 years carried superbly one day yes, one day no, and another more or less. And the idea of dedicating a recipe to her came to me just like that, out of the blue a few days ago, especially since… the recipe is hers! 😀

She was never a great cook, mom Leda first and grandma Leda later. Quite the opposite, and those who know us know this. But one thing she has always known how to do well, at least since I’ve known her: the fruit salad.
Yes, yes, I swear it’s true!
She made a heap of it for the buffet of our wedding, and then again for Flavia’s first birthday and for her baptism. For several years she had this obsession with fruit salad, she would prepare entire bowls, usually salad bowls, the largest and most capacious, and then she would deliver it to us, sometimes already sugared, sometimes not, but always strictly covered with tightly pulled cling film. And we were happy about it, really eh, because her fruit salad was really good (and against expectations eh eh eh! 😆 ).

😀

During the preparations for our homemade wedding party, she offered to make a fruit salad giving this very simple explanation: in a buffet, there are too many dry things like crackers and canapés, and a nice fruit salad is needed because it refreshes and quenches thirst. And it’s true! And in fact, on that and other occasions, the big bowl of her fruit salad was always attacked and emptied.

But the reason why her fruit salad pleased everyone (children who ‘I-don’t-like-this-fruit’ included) is not just because of the ‘refreshes and quenches thirst’, after all, there are drinks to quench thirst, right?
No, the real truth is that Leda’s fruit salad had an ingredient, which I discovered I don’t know how long ago, when I ate her fruit salad for the first time. For me, it was a discovery because I had never put this in a fruit salad, which jokingly became the ‘secret ingredient’, which in reality has nothing secret about it: walnuts. 😮 For me, they were the unexpected ingredient.

Maybe I was the naive one who had never thought of doing something so simple, or maybe it was normal that twenty or thirty years ago one used less creativity in the kitchen than now (creativity in the kitchen that my mother-in-law has always had, sometimes too much! 😀 ). But one thing is certain: in our family, Leda’s fruit salad has remained a must.

And even if now she may not remember teaching me this ‘secret’ anymore, I have been continuing this family tradition for decades now, and I always add walnuts to my fruit salads.

Because that hint of crunchiness gives great flavor, and because inevitably when the first portion is finished, you spontaneously think, ‘mmmm maybe I’ll have some more’!

Do you want to try it too?

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