Fruit Salad

Fruit salads are an excellent way to satisfy the need for light, refreshing accompaniments to summer meals. The abundance of fresh fruit available combines with other ingredients for some especially appealing combinations--both in flavor and appearance. Fresh strawberries, pineapple, grapes and bananas combine with whipping cream and honey in Creamy Fruit Salad, a recipe with minimum preparation and maximum results.

I'm writing this column having just spent an hour with our local fruit gleaner picking tangelos from my tree. We must have pulled at least 40 pounds. Earlier in the day, I'd picked an additional three dozen pieces of fruit for recipe testing. And the danged tree still looks like it hasn't been touched. This time of year in Southern California is an embarrassment of citrus riches. We've got so many tangerines, oranges, lemons, grapefruits and tangelos in my neighborhood that it seems impossible to figure out what to do with them all. One solution, of course, is gleaning - that's where volunteers harvest backyard fruit for donation to food charities.

What do quail eggs, bananas, green tea and cantaloupe have to do with your hair? Everything, if you take your hair to Tina Cassaday Creations' Beverly Hills salon. With such treatments and products as Orange Creamsicle Conditioner and Cantaloupe Cocktail, the salon's list of offerings reads like the menu at a health food restaurant. Cassaday mixed her first "fruit fix" for hair in 1980 and now counts some of Los Angeles' highest-profile celebrities as clients.

They shivered on the sidewalk, wind pelting their cheeks, and shuffled toward Evelyn Mount's modest beige home. For dozens of this out-of-luck gambling city's untoward and unemployed, it was a destination of last resort. Mount and her volunteers greeted them outside her two-car garage with enough groceries to whip up a feast. Mount has run a makeshift food bank here for three decades; there's probably never been a greater hunger for it. In the weeks before Thanksgiving, Mount's team handed out more than 7,000 meals, thousands more than during prosperous times.

The generations that grew up on syrupy canned fruit cocktail, in which all the square bits of fruit tasted virtually the same, may not recognize this. The New American Cuisine is modernizing the fruit cocktail into something that tastes of fresh fruit. The syrup is not too sweet; though called compotes, the dishes are made with raw or barely cooked fruit, making for a livelier texture. They may be spicy--sometimes they're even called fruit salsas.

You can tell, just by making the restaurant rounds these days, that salads make up 80% of the lunch trade, if not more. Why? Because salads are fast, health-conscious and light. Because they can, if you are lucky, be beautiful to look at and a great taste experience too. So we have selected the types of salads that qualify on all counts. Beautiful to look at, tasty, healthful and light.

I take offense to Scott Ostler's hit piece on Col. Ollie North. I don't know how Col. North earned his "fruit salad," but calling his heroism highly debatable is a cheap shot. Col. North may have been guilty of bad judgment, yes, even guilty of a criminal act, but I'll bet he didn't get those medals attacking a word processor. DAVID HART Orange

They shivered on the sidewalk, wind pelting their cheeks, and shuffled toward Evelyn Mount's modest beige home. For dozens of this out-of-luck gambling city's untoward and unemployed, it was a destination of last resort. Mount and her volunteers greeted them outside her two-car garage with enough groceries to whip up a feast. Mount has run a makeshift food bank here for three decades; there's probably never been a greater hunger for it. In the weeks before Thanksgiving, Mount's team handed out more than 7,000 meals, thousands more than during prosperous times.

So this is what drug control has come to! A publicity-avaricious female with "Nancy" scrolled across the front of her jacket and a politically ambitious police chief grinning at us! This is not even to mention the taxpayers' dollars spent on the "air-conditioned motor home parked beside the alleged rock house" which "had been ordered up for Mrs. Reagan's comfort because 'she's been on her feet all day,' " and to which she could repair with her police chief host to munch fruit salad.

Although I love baking cakes and making rich chocolate sweets, the desserts I make most often in the warm months are salads of fresh summer fruit. This time of year I can't resist buying fruit every chance I get. As the fruit becomes aromatic, even the local supermarket turns into a more exciting place. And there's nothing nicer than shopping at an outdoor farmer's market and then going home to enjoy a large bowl of fruit salad.

Who can resist the Wiggles? The Australian group has spent the last 20 years clowning around onstage, bringing its songs, smiling faces, brightly colored turtleneck jerseys and bubbly personalities to kids around the world. Anthony Field, Murray Cook, Jeff Fatt and Sam Moran, color-coded as, respectively, the blue, red, purple and yellow Wiggles, appeal to kids with their carefully choreographed simplicity and lyrics such as "Fruit salad, yummy yummy! Fruit salad, yummy yummy!" On Sunday, kids can see the "Wiggly Circus Live!"

The other Sunday I was standing in the middle of a swarm of shoppers at my local Long Beach farmers market, trying to decide between getting more of John Tenerelli's terrific Fantasia nectarines or yet another box of Garcia Family Farms' figs, so ripe they were almost falling apart. I was in one of those cook's reveries: Nectarines or figs? Or maybe another Galia melon from Weiser's? And what did I feel like doing with them? Sometimes I think half the fun of cooking is thinking about it beforehand.

  Total time: 15 minutes, plus 2 hours resting time for the salad Servings: 6 Note: Adapted from "Ten: All the Foods We Love . . . and Ten Recipes for Each" by Sheila Lukins. Assemble the blueberry fool no more than 2 hours prior to serving. Berry fruit salad 1 pint fresh blueberries, lightly rinsed and patted dry 1 pint fresh blackberries, lightly rinsed and patted dry 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves In a large, nonreactive bowl, combine the blueberries, blackberries, lemon juice and sugar.

IN EARLY May, Southern California shoppers stalk farmers market stalls, impatient -- some might say a little fruit-crazed -- for the season's first cherries By now, with California's cherry harvest reaching its end and reinforcements arriving from the orchards of Washington and Oregon, we've grown happily accustomed to the pints of Rainiers and Tartarians, Bings and Queen Anne's, filling the market pints like big, ruby marbles.

DEAR SOS: The Savannah Chop House in Laguna Niguel serves a fabulous grilled hearts of romaine salad. Can you request the recipe? MAUREEN SADLOWSKI Coto de Caza DEAR MAUREEN: Pico de gallo (salsa) and roasted pumpkin seed dressing give this plain-Jane salad its lively character. You can serve the pico de gallo as a dip on other occasions.

If baked ham is going to be the focal point of your Easter menu, it's likely that there will be bits and pieces left over. A cup is all you need to make this frittata for a brunch or light dinner. When there's no ham on hand, add a small, fully cooked center cut slice to your shopping list and a couple of minutes to the countdown to cut it into chunks. The frittata can be inverted as instructed or made in an oven-proof skillet and run under a broiler to finish cooking the top.

I'm writing this column having just spent an hour with our local fruit gleaner picking tangelos from my tree. We must have pulled at least 40 pounds. Earlier in the day, I'd picked an additional three dozen pieces of fruit for recipe testing. And the danged tree still looks like it hasn't been touched. This time of year in Southern California is an embarrassment of citrus riches. We've got so many tangerines, oranges, lemons, grapefruits and tangelos in my neighborhood that it seems impossible to figure out what to do with them all. One solution, of course, is gleaning - that's where volunteers harvest backyard fruit for donation to food charities.

Press coverage of a recent avocado heist in Temecula revealed that the pockmarked "pears" are the most commonly pilfered produce in California. The suspects in this case allegedly made off with 11,000 pounds of them. That's a lot of guacamole. It's also a lot of potassium, Vitamin A and, sadly, fat, albeit of the monounsaturated variety, which hasn't been shown to raise cholesterol levels. I often spread ripe avocado on toast and sandwiches in place of butter or mayonnaise.

What do quail eggs, bananas, green tea and cantaloupe have to do with your hair? Everything, if you take your hair to Tina Cassaday Creations' Beverly Hills salon. With such treatments and products as Orange Creamsicle Conditioner and Cantaloupe Cocktail, the salon's list of offerings reads like the menu at a health food restaurant. Cassaday mixed her first "fruit fix" for hair in 1980 and now counts some of Los Angeles' highest-profile celebrities as clients.

The generations that grew up on syrupy canned fruit cocktail, in which all the square bits of fruit tasted virtually the same, may not recognize this. The New American Cuisine is modernizing the fruit cocktail into something that tastes of fresh fruit. The syrup is not too sweet; though called compotes, the dishes are made with raw or barely cooked fruit, making for a livelier texture. They may be spicy--sometimes they're even called fruit salsas.