A Healthy Treat for the Weekend

Don't you love the change of pace weekends offer? It's the perfect time to prepare foods for the coming week's meals as well as work with our children in the kitchen.

With this idea in mind, here's a recipe for a healthy and delicious treat you can serve up as part of a meal, or just as a perfect snack. It's also a recipe children can handle with ease. This recipe is from an email newsletter I get, "Your Health Today," by Jim and Colleen Simmons and I believe it's their creation. So hat's off to 'em--they've got a winner here.

And please do share any of your winners--we're always looking for those our children can learn off of as well as those that are just plain good! Until next time then, here's to having fun in the kitchen with the kids, eating healthy, and making family dinner hour possible!

TROPICAL BLACK BEAN SALSA

1 mango, peeled, pitted and cubed
1 cup pineapple chunks
3 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro
1 medium onion, chopped
6 ripe roma tomatoes
1 red pepper, chopped
1/2 Serrano chili pepper
5 or 6 baby carrots
2 cups frozen or fresh from the cob corn
2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 Avocado
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tsp cider vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon minced fresh garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 dash of chili powder
1 large bed of leafy greens of choice


Add all the ingredients, except the mango, pineapple, corn, beans, avocado, and leafy greens to blender; with variable speed blender begin on the lowest setting and slowly increase until ingredients are chopped (not blended) to a nice salsa consistency. Next, stir in remaining ingredients. Allow mix to combine flavors for 15 minutes or so and then enjoy over a large bed of leafy greens. This is also exceptionally good over a piece of toasted naturally leavened bread, Mmmm! Also, this salsa bean combination can be refrigerated successfully for several days.