Fruit Salad with Cardamom Cider Dressing

When we decided to have a week com­pletely devoted to sal­ads I knew I couldn’t make a green salad. After all, Ceri is the queen of the green salad. I mean the lady has cor­nered our mar­ket with her salmon din­ner salad, green god­dess and that crazy deli­cious grilled shrimp salad. I knew instead I would tackle the hum­ble fruit salad. After all, it’s what we live on in the sum­mer months at our cot­tage. We pick our own blue­ber­ries and straw­ber­ries up the street at the local farm (it’s a great morn­ing activ­ity) and have found wild rasp­berry bushes on the foot path we like to hike. So we often bring along a bas­ket on our walks that we can fill. Some times that bas­ket makes it home with rasp­ber­ries, other times we eat them as we walk. Need­less to say, we have a lot of local fruit kick­ing around.

I usu­ally like to keep a bowl of blue­ber­ries on the table out­side for us (or what­ever neigh­bour that drops by) to graze on, but when I have guests I don’t feel like I can toss fruit at them and say “now eat”. So I get all fancy and make a salad. (Good­ness, you know it’s the lazy days of sum­mer when the sim­ple act of cut­ting is con­sid­ered fancy prep work.)

I love to bake with car­damom so I knew I couldn’t go wrong if I stirred it into a dress­ing for my lav­ish salad. Plus cardamom’s exotic cola flavour com­pli­ments fruit and makes my guests say, “gosh, what is that I taste?” It’s a great salad to have in the morn­ing with pan­cakes, as an after­noon snack or with a dol­lop of fresh whipped cream on top for dessert. You can also tai­lor it to suit what your fam­ily loves. When peaches start to hit our local farmer’s stands, I often stir them into the mix. I’ve also been known to pitch in some bananas, black­ber­ries or orange slices.