The Breakfast Challenge – Spring Fruit Salad With Oat Nut Crumble

We picked the first of the season’s paw paws this morning (papaya in USA).  And Brian brought me a bucket of mulberries from their magnificent tree – the earliest around.  After months of citrus and custard apples, the berry season is here!

You don’t get to enjoy mulberries unless you have a tree (or know someone like Brian, or can find an unharvested neighbourhood tree) – one of the many fantastic foods that have never made it into our commercialised system only because they are too soft to transport and store.  Mulberries are  hugely healthy – most foods with that deep colour are rich sources of anti-oxidants, and mulberries are also a really good source of iron along with a batch of other vitamins and  minerals.

The best way to eat mulberries is to be ten years old and sitting up in the fork of the tree,  near naked to save clothes from stains, maybe with some other kids to chat with or maybe just with your thoughts, selecting the fattest purple berries to go directly from tree to mouth.  Failing that though, paw paw, strawberry, mulberry and citrus fruit salad is one of those made-in-heaven combinations.  With home made yoghurt and oat nut crumble….

Oat Nut Crumble

Get all the ingredients assembled before you start.  This cooks really quickly and is easy to burn.

Put a heavy bottomed fry pan on over a medium-high heat.

Add just 1 teaspoon honey and 1 teaspoon macadamia oil, then, as soon as they are warm and mixed,

• 2 dessertspoons rolled oats
• 3 dessertspoons seeds and nuts – I used one each of pepitas, sunflower seeds, and macadamias.

Cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes until they brown and the seeds start popping.

Best fresh made, and it only takes a minute.

(The Breakfast Cereal Challenge is my 2011 challenge – a year’s worth of breakfast recipes based on in-season ingredients, that are quick and easy enough to be a real option for weekdays, and that are preferable, in nutrition, ethics, and taste,  to the overpackaged, overpriced, mostly empty packets of junk food marketed as “cereal” .The Muesli Bar Challenge was my 2010 Challenge.)