Our Grocery Game

For whatever reason, it has become easier to take all four of my girls to the grocery store, rather than wait for Hubby to come home and go by myself. This is not something I would have tried a year or so ago, but my girls have been surprisingly well behaved on all of our recent grocery outings. They do, however, seem to think we should buy everything in the bakery and in the cookie aisle. To avoid the "can we buy this?" conundrum, we've started playing a new "game." Every week we make it our mission to find a fruit we've never tried. 
It all started a few weeks ago when the price of blueberries was ridiculous. My girls were disappointed that we weren't going to buy one of their favorite fruits, so when I saw star fruit, I appeased them with that. They were hooked and have been looking forward to finding a new fruit each week.
So far we've tried:
Star fruit - they all liked it
Kiwi - they all liked it (they've had kiwi in fruit salads before, but it was fun for them to see what the fruit looks like in its skin)
Apricot - only two liked this
Pineapple - they all liked it (they've had pineapple, but this was the first time they've had a whole pineapple)
Papaya - no one really cared for this. I tried it and wasn't impressed. I may not have bought a ripe one.
This little experiment of ours has been fun for all of us, but a bit of a challenge, too. My web searches lately have consisted of "How to cut (insert fruit here)." Surprisingly, out of all the new things we've tried, the whole pineapple has been one of the easiest to peel and cut.
As the summer winds down, our fruit selections are going to be limited. I just don't know that we would have the same outcome trying different vegetables, so I'm thinking once a week we'll have to find a new recipe to try. It should be fun to see what they come up with.

A Fruitful Summer

Summer is my favorite time of year. I like the heat (for the most part) and I love the sunshine. Plus, I always look forward to eating fresh fruit. Cold fruit is the perfect snack after an outing to the pool.
This year, my daughters are actually putting in requests for which fruit they want me to buy. I typically buy strawberries, blueberries, grapes and bananas. Lately, they've also been asking for raspberries, blackberries and mango. While I don't care for tomatoes, I've been buying grape tomatoes because two of my girls really like them.
My girls are really into talking about how "colorful" their plates are when they're filled with fruits and vegetables. It's a fun way for me to explain (in simple terms) health and nutrition. They're starting to understand that the more colors you have on your plate, the healthier your meal is.
Still, if anyone has tips for storing raspberries, send them my way. Keeping them in the plastic containers they come in seems to result in mold within a day or two.