Sticking with healthier habits over Christmas can be challenging – it's not called the silly season for nothing! Come December, our calendars start to fill with an endless stream of end-of-year celebrations, often centred around bubbles and tasty food. Toss in impending work deadlines and a rush to get Christmas shopping done and presents wrapped; it's easy to send healthy habits out the window with a shrug of the shoulders. Because 'meh' it's Christmas, and New Year’s resolutions are just around the corner.
Enjoying the silly season, and glorious food, is part-and-parcel with this special time of year - it’s Christmas after all. But without striking some balance, it's quite easy to overindulge on alcohol, excess food and Christmas treats, which may leave us entering January feeling a little worse for wear.
Enter this festive fruit salad. While indulging in brandy-filled Christmas fruit pudding on the 25th is indeed an important tradition (at least in my household!) it's also nice to have a light and refreshing dessert on the table to complement the warmer summery weather. Packed with juicy fruit, brimming with antioxidants and vitamins, this dish is just as nutritious as it is tasty.
Festive Christmas Fruit Salad
Ingredients
- 1/2 large watermelon or 1 smaller watermelon
- 1 honeydew melon
- 1 lime
- 1 punnet of strawberries
- 1 pomegranate
- 1 handful of fresh mint
- A few heaped tbsp of vanilla coconut yoghurt
Method
- Dice watermelon and honeydew melon into bite-sized pieces and add to a serving bowl. Alternatively, you can use a melon baller for a different shape.
- To use a melon baller: simply sink melon baller into the flesh of the melon with the inside of the scoop orientated away from you, pressing down until the entire scoop has sunken into the flesh. Then rotate the baller 180 degrees so the scoop is facing towards you. Remove and add to your serving bowl.
- Slice strawberries in half. Add to serving bowl.
- Open pomegranate. To do this neat and tidy get a sharp knife and cut an 'X' into the top of the pomegranate about half way down the fruit. Then fill up a large bowl with water and open the pomegranate in the water, using the ‘X’ to pry it open with your fingers – if the cross is deep enough it should easily pull apart. Then pull the seeds out, letting them float in the water (this will minimise the mess and spillage with the pomegranate’s ruby red juice!). Take seeds out of water and sprinkle into the salad.
- Zest lime, sprinkle over the salad. Slice lime in half, squeezing each over the salad.
- Finely slice mint leaves and sprinkle over the fruit salad as well.
- Keep the fruit salad chilled until time to serve. When serving, dollop on the vanilla coconut yoghurt.
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Danijela Unkovich is a nutritionist and blogger at Healthy Always, where she shares recipe ideas and wellness inspiration.