Name: Fruit Salsa
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 20 min
Ingredients: 1 cup strawberries; 3 mandarin oranges; 1 mango, diced; 1/2 cup pineapple chunks, diced; 1/4 cup red onion, chopped; 1/4 cup green onion, sliced; 1/4 cup cilantro, minced; 1 tbsp lime juice; 1 tsp honey (paleo) or agave nectar (vegan), optional

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Fruit Salsa {Paleo} takes less than 20 minutes to make and pairs particularly well with its better half, Baked Cinnamon Apple Chips.

Two posts in one day???? What in the actual what? It’s true, and it will probably never happen again, however these two recipes go together like chips and dip. Peanut butter and chocolate. Tony and Ziva. Almond butter and chocolate. Jessica Fletcher and her typewriter. Essentially, some pairs are just timeless.

Baked Cinnamon Apple Chips and Fruit Salsa are members of this club, too. Envisioning the one without the other is, once you’ve tried them, virtually impossible to do. So how did these two find each other? It all started long before our family went paleo. An old classic cookbook of mine had a recipe for a fruit and veggie salsa, to be served with homemade cinnamon tortilla chips. Clearly we ate this combo like there was no tomorrow.

And then tomorrow came, we went paleo, and those recipes went bye-bye. I started seeing recipes for baked apples and thought, what if the baked cinnamon apples could replace the tortillas? And what if I replaced some of the allergy-laden ingredients of the original salsa with those our family can enjoy? How easy and tasty would that be?

So easy and so tasty, the combination of sweet fruits with vegetables and herbs gives this appetizer a piquant flavor. Matched with Baked Cinnamon Apple chips, it’s over-the-top flavor, and now we have a timeless duo.

But transparency is critical in any relationship. So let me just say that while this is the perfect party food, if you’re like me, you’ll just want to hide in a closet somewhere with a bowl of each and chow down. Sharing is caring, but sharing is hard.

Let me also add that the amounts listed by each ingredient are a guideline. Please read this as, “Morgan just started throwing foods she likes eating into a bowl and began to stir.” This is actually pretty close to the truth. In fact, while I was photographing the salsa, I decided there wasn’t enough red in the picture. So I added more strawberries, which turned out to be a delicious decision.

So how should you decide the amounts? You can follow these directions exactly (adding a few extra strawberries to the mix!!!), or you can look at ratios. Lots of mango, mandarins, and strawberries with some pineapple, red and green onion, and cilantro. A little lime juice, then maybe some honey or agave nectar for additional sweetness.

And now we are back to eating this like there is no tomorrow. More transparency: when we started our paleo diet, I was convinced we starve to death. When that didn’t happen I became convinced I’d go crazy without crunchy foods. Carrots are a vegetable and don’t count as a crunchy food unless they are covered in this dip. And then I missed the usual suspects like cinnamon tortilla chips. Sharing may be caring, and sharing may be hard, but you know what else is hard? Change, especially food changes.

If you ever find yourself in this same predicament of thought, then make those baked cinnamon apple chips and a bowl of this Fruit Salsa. Your faith in paleo will be renewed with a sweet, piquant, crunchy, crispy goodness; a healthy comfort food at your finger tips.