Many of you may know that I love produce. I make juice for breakfast every day and always load my grocery cart with it when I shop. I stock up on certain fruits and vegetables in the summer and freeze them to use over the winter. And I love finding recipes to use produce in season throughout the year. So, naturally when it was my turn to host a cooking class among some friends, I chose to talk about using produce in season. I think a lot of people think that we just have to hunker down and eat meat and potatoes all winter long but that’s not the case, there are so many yummy winter fruits and vegetables. {Well, in the midwest, we do have to rely on our kind friends in warmer states to share with us} I picked a few different recipes to share for the cooking class, so I thought I would share some with you.

Citrus: is a winter food so I made an orange chocolate mousse. I sliced some blood orange and grapefruit and sprinkled raw sugar on top to make it a little sweeter.

Pears: Most people caramel apples, but why not pears? Pears are very prevalent in the winter so I dipped them in caramel and then rolled them in some raw sugar. I made this pizza dough and topped the pizza with some shredded gruyere cheese, sliced pears and drizzled honey.

Kiwi: I love making a spinach strawberry salad and simply used kiwis instead of the strawberries because kiwi are in season. In addition to the kiwi and spinach, I added sliced almonds, sliced green onions, feta cheese and balsamic dressing.

Persimmon: I’ll share the persimmon caprese toast recipe later in the week-that was by far my favorite. I was so pleasantly surprised to see how much I like persimmons-I had never had one before.