Colton's fruit salad.

For a boy who is a semi-picky eater, he sure does love a lot of aspects of food. He'll crawl up on my lap and say, "want to watch tv with me?" "Sure," I say. "What should we watch?" Almost always as we flip through the channels, its not the SpongeBob show or any other kind of kid's show that he'll choose. He will almost always light up as soon as a "cooking show" flashes on the screen. He is enthralled from start to finish. He is also no talk show food personality snob. No he is not. He doesn't care if you're Bobbie Flay or Rachel Ray, if you're talking food, he is listening! Although, Guy Fieri, with his "bleach-blonde hair in the air," has caused Colton to raise an eyebrow or bust a gut laughing. Sometimes Guy takes a bite of food that is sooo hot it "could cause your hair to stand on end," and he always says that as he dramatically looks up at his hair!

But hands down, Colton's favorite thing to do is help me "cook" or "bake." He gather's the ingredients, I measure, he dumps, I stir, he tastes :) Its a great tag-team sport we've perfected. With age however, he is branching out. The other day in a fit of boredom since mom has been sneezing and coughing and blech-ing, he came to me wanting the cookbook with all the pictures in it. He sat for the rest of the afternoon circlling page numbers and pictures of all the things he wanted to make. They ranged from dips to elaborate breads. But the one that had really caught his eye was a basic fruit salad. He came to me later for a recipe card and was so excited because he just knew he could make this salad. So he went through and carefully identified each fruit and asked Rick to write them down.

Here is how the list went:

peaches
pears
bananas
strawberries
blueberries
cherries
raspberries
grapes
cantaloupe
watermelon
apples
oranges
pineapple... etc.,


And then, he convinced Rick to take him to the grocery store. If you cook at all, you know there are two big issues to this list. One, between the bananas and apples that brown quickly, and the melding of all these varieties, the taste was questionable at best. And two, the expense of all that fresh fruit, would be enough to blow the grocery budget for weeks to come.


But Dad, who does not cook, took on the shopping challenge and I waited anxiously to see how he would fare. Apparently after he got to about 30 (!) dollars worth of fruit, Dad drew the line. And here is the beauty of Dad's thinking quickly on their feet. He bought, bananas, grapes, strawberries, melon, and a few more fruits on sale, and ONE BIG CAN of fruit cocktail!! Score one for Dad.

So yesterday we made Colton's Fruit Salad. We drained the fruit cocktail first, and (sort of buried at the bottom of the bowl), then adorned the top with the fresh fruit. By the time we were done slicing and dicing, Colton was beaming. I have to admit, it looked pretty yummy.

Plus, we decided we needed a little dip for it and here is the one we tried:

We blended together:

1 8 oz. package of softened cream cheese

3/4 of a cup of packed light brown sugar

1 tsp. of vanilla



And the verdict? Delish!! I wouldn't typically put in a can of fruit cocktail with a fruit salad... but the things we will do to please a six 6 year old! Move over all of you Rachel Ray's and Bobby Flay's... Colton J is on his way :)