A tale of two fruit salads

Once upon a time, when serving fruit salad for a large brunch party, we used to make two-- both with the fruit lightly macerated and dressed in lemon juice, and one with the addition of mint. [N.B. The best way to add mint to a fruit salad is to treat it as a giant mojito. Julienne/dice a large amount of mint, then toss it with sugar. Then muddle (i.e., smash) the sugar against the side of the bowl until the oil in the mint leaves starts to make a paste with the sugar. This is easier than you think! Then add lemon juice. Amounts to taste, but 1/2 a cup fo sugar and the juice of 2 lemons was pretty good for half a watermelon, a canteloupe, and a quart of strawberries.] We figured that some people wouldn't want such a fancy addition to a simple fruit salad and would prefer the simpler version.

Every single time, we ran out of mint fruit salad long before the plain one. We learned from experience, and feel unabashed about adding mint now.

Recently, I've begun to think about adding crumbled or diced feta cheese to our basic mint fruit salad. "And yet," I thought to myself, "some of our guests are vegan, or don't like briny cheese. So we should make two. . . ." [I haven't tried it yet.]