fruit salsa

My friend Carrie just got back from Africa (read about the project she worked on here), and so naturally her and her husband had a party to welcome her back. They provided burgers and potato salad and sangria (yum!), and we all brought a side. I decided to bring fruit salsa and cinnamon sugar tortilla chips, which is kind of the dessert version of chips and salsa. It was a pretty easy dish as long as you don't mind chopping (I used to hate chopping until I got a santoku knife - thanks Mom!!).

Fruit Salsa:
two golden delicious apples, peeled, cored and diced
8 oz raspberries, diced (is it really possible to dice raspberries? no, it is not - do the best you can)
1lb strawberries, diced
2 kiwis, diced

Cinnamon Sugar Tortilla Chips:
10 flour tortillas
cinnamon
sugar
butter flavored cooking spray

Mix all the fruit together. Chop and add the apples last so that you can immediately add them to the other fruit. The juices from the other fruit will keep the apples from turning brown. Chill the fruit in the fridge for 15 minutes or longer, and then enjoy with tortilla chips (keep reading for recipe).

There are probably lots of ways to make these tortilla chips, but here is the method I found easiest: Lay a couple of tortillas on a cookie pan. Spray with the cooking spray. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar all over the tortillas. Spray again with the butter spray. Use a pizza cutter to slice the tortillas into triangles. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 8-10 minutes. Repeat for all tortillas. I used the smaller tortillas (not sure of the size, but the ones for tacos, not 10" burrito tortillas), and could fit three per cookie sheet.

We broke out this dish as a dessert (along with some peanut butter chocolate bars from Kat - yum!), and it was really yummy. I'll definitely make this dish again, especially because its pretty awesome to be able to say you made your own tortilla chips. But if you'd like to save some time (or its just too darned hot to turn the oven on!), you can pick up a bag of cinnamon sugar tortilla chips at the store. I know Trader Joes has some, but I'm not sure if all grocery stores carry these.

If you have leftover fruit, there are lots of other things you can do with it. Tom and I had it over yogurt this morning for breakfast.

What are your favorite summer cookout dishes?

**Pictures to come