Just when winter colds creep up on us, delicious sniffle-fighting citrus fruit comes into season. Citrus fruit is high in many nutrients including vitamin C, which helps fight infection and inflammation, and keeps your skin looking healthy. Vitamin C also helps you absorb iron from your food.
Citrus fruit is also high in other important nutrients that help keep you healthy too, such as folate, potassium, beta-carotene and fiber.
There are many different fruits in the citrus family, each with a unique size, color, and flavor. Some popular ones include:
- Mandarins – a mini orange with loose skin
- Clementines – seedless mandarins
- Tangerines – a mandarin with a slightly reddish color and unique taste
- Tangelos – a cross between a tangerine, a grapefruit, and an orange
The citrus family also includes various oranges such as:
- Blood oranges with a deep red flesh
- Cara Cara oranges with a pinkish flesh
- Navel oranges that can sometimes have a smaller orange growing inside of them.
Of course, there are also lemons, limes, grapefruits and kumquats too!
So make it a point to get out and try a variety of citrus fruit this month, and once you find a few that you like, use them to make this healthy fruit salad recipe , my delicious citrus and mint salad.
- 2 cups bite-sized citrus fruit chunks*
- ½ finely chopped fresh mint, or to taste
- 1 Tbsp. sugar
- Turbinado sugar, for topping
- In a medium bowl, mix all ingredients thoroughly. Refrigerate for an hour to marry flavors. Serve chilled with a sprinkling of turbinado sugar on top.
- *choose a variety of flavors and colors such as navel, blood and cara cara oranges mixed with grapefruit, tangerines or clementine.
Serve this in a pretty dish, and there you have it, A Nutritious Dish…in a Matter of Minutes!™
