Just in time for a holiday brunch or family breakfast, a savory fruit salad that pairs well with egg dishes, muffins or sweet breads. There's one spice mix for winter fruits, another for summer fruits. Some times, yes, I stir in a few fruity-textured vegetables, too, just to mix it up at little. THAT WAS THEN When my sister and I were girls, our mother went to great trouble to get pomegranates for the toes of our Christmas stockings, continuing the tradition from her own girlhood. There was no 'cooking' with pomegranates then, we'd break off rough sections and pick off the seeds for sucking, one by one. A whole pomegranate, it lasted for days. Nowadays, fresh pomegranates are so common during the weeks surrounding Christmas, it's easy to forget what a treat they once were. THIS IS NOW In Oaxaca, Mexico, pomegranate juice is a natural pigment for hand-woven wool rugs. Surprisingly, the pomegranate-dyed skeins of yarn aren’t the pretty red that makes pome...

This week Weight Watchers overhauled its points system for the first time in thirteen years. Officially, zip-zap the old points are gone and have already been replaced by new PointsPlus values. So far, I like the new PointsPlus program a bunch but here at Kitchen Parade, we like to eat our cake and have it too! Here's what to expect during the next few weeks. (WATCH THIS PAGE for FURTHER UPDATES I'll post a link to this page in the sidebar and add information as the transition progresses.) January 3 Update: I've started to update recipes with the new PointsPlus point values. Since Kitchen Parade recipes already err toward healthful, fiber-rich and low-carb ingredients, so far, most recipes are increasing by a single point, some stay the same. Now that the holidays are over, I can devote more time to the updates; once I get some down the road, I'll create a new page with recipes sorted by the new points. MY APOLOGIES first, however, to readers who don...

Welcome to Kitchen Parade's first new tool for the program called "PointsPlus" which Weight Watchers launched in late 2010. (Update: Weight Watchers later replaced PointsPlus with SmartPoints in late 2015 and with Freestyle in late 2017.) On this page, you'll find what Weight Watchers called "Power Foods" in the PointsPlus program in a list of all of WW's healthy, whole-food and real-food ingredients – best of all, those ingredients are linked to the Kitchen Parade recipes which use those ingredients! ~ Skip Straight to the Power Food List ~ WW Is Special Many Weight Watchers love that we can "eat what we want" so long as we count points. The combination of "unlimited food choices" with "limited portion size" remains a fundamental feature of the new PointsPlus point system that Weight Watchers just unveiled. While other eating regimes and diets work great for people, me, I cannot imagine giving up bread, rice, pot...