Honey Poppy Seed Fruit Salad — The First Sweet Thing of May

May. The rhubarb is ready — thick stalks, deep red, the first harvest of the season. I pulled six stalks on Monday and I stood in the garden holding them and the weight of them in my hand was the weight of May, which is the weight of beginning. I made rhubarb crisp. The first dessert of the season. Rhubarb, sugar, the crumble topping of oats and butter and brown sugar. Baked until the fruit bubbles and the top is golden and the kitchen smells like the promise of summer that hasn't quite arrived. I brought a crisp to Mamma. She sat at her kitchen table and ate a slice and said, "Early rhubarb this year." I said, "The winter was mild." She said, "The rhubarb doesn't care about mild. The rhubarb does what the rhubarb does." Mamma. Attributing stubbornness to a vegetable. The vegetable deserves it. Elsa told me her secret. Tuesday evening, at the kitchen table, over cups of tea. She said, "Mom, I've been seeing someone." A someone. Elsa, who has been alone since — well, since always, since Voyageurs, since the wolves, since the deliberate solitude of a woman who chose sky over walls — has a someone. His name is Tom. Tom Birch. He's a canoe guide and outdoor educator from Ely — the same Ely where Elsa spent her winters tracking wolves. They met at a naturalist conference last fall. He's thirty-two (Elsa is twenty-six). He paddles. He teaches. He smells like campfire (Elsa's description, delivered with a look that told me everything about how she feels about campfire smell). I said, "When do I meet him?" She said, "He's coming to Duluth next month." I said, "I'll make dinner." She said, "Nothing fancy, Mom. He eats camp food." I said, "I'll make camp food." She said, "You don't know how to make camp food." I said, "I'll make meatballs. Everyone eats meatballs." Meatballs. The universal welcome. The Johansson handshake. Come to the table, eat the meatballs, join the family. I made a May dinner: walleye with lemon and dill, from the Park Point smokehouse. The spring fish. The lake fish. The Duluth fish. Eaten on the porch, watching the garden grow, thinking about Elsa and a man named Tom who smells like campfire and who might, might, be the person who walks beside my youngest daughter through the wilderness she loves. Elsa has a someone. The world continues to surprise me. The rhubarb is ready. The world is surprising. The meatballs are the plan.

The rhubarb crisp was the first sweet thing of the season — baked from something stubborn and tart pulled straight from the cold ground — and it reminded me that May deserves to be celebrated with fresh, honest food that doesn’t try too hard. When I started thinking about the dinner I’ll make for Tom, the man who smells like campfire and apparently has won my daughter’s heart, I kept coming back to something like this: a fruit salad with honey and poppy seed, bright and simple and generous, the kind of thing you set on a porch table in May and let speak for itself. It’s the same spirit as the rhubarb — let the season do the work.

Honey Poppy Seed Fruit Salad

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 1 cup green grapes, halved
• 1 cup cantaloupe or honeydew melon, cubed
• 2 kiwi, peeled and sliced
• 1 cup fresh pineapple chunks
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1 lime)
• 1 teaspoon poppy seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon lime zest
• Fresh mint leaves, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Prepare the fruit. Wash and dry all fruit thoroughly. Hull and halve the strawberries, halve the grapes, cube the melon, peel and slice the kiwi, and cut the pineapple into bite-sized chunks. Add all fruit to a large serving bowl.
2. Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, fresh lime juice, lime zest, and poppy seeds until fully combined and the honey is dissolved into the lime juice.
3. Dress the salad. Pour the honey-poppy seed dressing over the fruit and gently toss until all pieces are lightly coated. Take care not to crush the softer berries.
4. Rest and serve. Let the salad sit for 5 minutes before serving so the dressing can settle into the fruit. Garnish with fresh mint leaves if desired. Serve immediately or refrigerate for up to 2 hours before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 110 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 1g | Carbs: 27g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 8mg