Daily Dilemma: My Fruit Doesn't Look Like the Magazine

While reading my Women's Health the other day, I came across this awesome spread telling me I needed to eat more purple fruit:

Lately I've been eating lots of bananas, dried cherries, tomatoes,and avocados (fruit, my friends!), but purple has been a bit lacking from my diet.  So naturally, I was going to take good care of my health and expand the horizon of our fruit basket (which is actually a red colander).

In a perfect world, I would go to Whole Foods or PCC and buy beautiful organic fruit.

In the real world, I'm on a budget.

So I went to Costco with my mom last week...and we spilt a carton of good-looking plums. 

At Costco...with an all fruit & veggie Jamba

 However, these plums were not as nice as they seemed.  After a few days, they began to mock me and my budget.  Some refused to ripen.  The others got mushy and wrinkly.  As a whole, they refused to demonstrate flavor of any kind.

So how did I respond?  Did I sit and weep?  (No, but I've cried over weirder stuff.)  Did I toss the plums into the trash?  (Gah what a waste of money.)  No.

I chopped up the little blighters and made them into a totally edible purple fruit salad.

Totally Edible Purple Fruit Salad:

• 5 rather dismal plums
• 1.5 cups frozen blackberries
• A few tablespoons 100% fruit blueberry jam
• A few teaspoons ground cloves

Chop plums.  Mix other ingredients.  Tell plums they better be nice or the blackberries will prick them to death.  Separate fruit salad into 3 containers to take to work.  (Packing a slice of brie to go with each isn't a bad idea.)

And voila!  Dilemma solved.