Devonne Brown

Thanksgiving is about fruit salad. Forget the birds and big gourds, even the shellfish and breadcrumbs. It’s all about the fruit. 

When Dad was little, his dad would make this incredible fruit salad during the holidays. When you’re from Clay county WV, that fruit salad is a gourmet delight. Grapes, bananas, mandarin oranges, fruit cocktail, pineapple, a whole jar of maraschino cherries. Any canned fruit he could find went into the fruit salad. It was ambrosia.  He would make the biggest vat he could store it in.

If there’s fruit salad on the table, it’s a special day. It’s either Thanksgiving or Christmas, no exceptions.

Last year, my son and I spent Thanksgiving alone. We chose filet mignon, and I made the pastry that wrapped the beef. He  made the most wonderful sweet potatoes. There was a chocolate cake. And there had to be a concoction of a giant fruit salad just for the two of us. It’s a holiday dessert more necessary than pumpkin pie.

We complained while we split the grapes and sliced the bananas that filled up the sides of the jar. Ian couldn’t figure out which juices to pour from the fruits and which of the juices to save. He wanted to  know where fruit cocktail came from, seriously? 

Sadly, my pastry was divine, but the roast wasn’t. After removing the pastry, from the beef, we left the beef in the crock pot several more hours before it was delectable. We enjoyed the dining experience into the wee hours.

A fruit salad stands alone. It’s not something you necessarily have with the meal. It’s a side. It’s a dessert. It’s a condiment. It has healing properties. It offers comfort. 

Once you have fruit salad, you understand its significance. It gives credence to the words ‘food therapy.” Fruit salad, because it is made in concert and with love, makes you smile. It offers a lightness of being that chocolate can’t compete with, and doesn’t. Chocolate is a realist that is comfortable with its own sense of self. 

Fruit salad takes a village, even a griping, grouchy one to make, and only a mouthful to begin to heal.