A Beauty Queen's Fruit Dreams
“‘I forgot—why can’t we just drink the ocean water?’ Tiara asked.
’Because people pee in there all the time,’ Brittani explained with assurance.
’Also, the bloat,’ Miss Ohio chimed in. ‘I retain like crazy.’
’No,’ Shanti said. ‘It’s because if you drink the salt water, you’ll get sick. Drink enough and you’ll die.’
Tiara raised her hand. ‘But will you still be bloated?’”
I really wanted to bake something for this book. Cook something, at least. But it's a book about pageant girls, trapped on an island, right before their competition. They wouldn't eat anything that was cooked, let alone baked.
On page 71, the girls talk about a popular diet they've done... one where you can only eat grapefruit and hot sauce. One of the girls admits that she did the diet without the grapefruit.
I thought a fruit salad would pair nicely with this book. If they can eat grapefruit, they can eat a fruit salad.
They find coconuts on the island, so I wanted to incorporate coconut (115). They also find red berries. The berries that they find give them incredibly clear skin almost immediately, but are also psychedelic (77).
I wasn't going to try to find or use anything like that, so I decided to use red raspberries, which are supposed to help with weight loss.
As far as the skin clearing abilities of the berries in the book—mangoes are supposed to be really good for your skin.
I wanted to add a fruit that would be exotic and striking. After all, these girls dedicate their whole lives to their looks. I wanted the fruit to have some sort of health benefit that the girls would be excited about, too. After doing a quick google search, I found out that dragon fruit has some anti-aging properties.
Obviously, I had to use it.
I could have stopped there. I thought about stopping there. It didn't feel right, though. It was all too sweet and too safe.
This book is very much like Lord of the Flies, in that the girls were on their way to the competition when their plane crashed on a deserted island, and all of their supervisors (film crew) were dead. Also like The Lord of the Flies, there was something dangerous on the island... something watching them. This time though, there actually is something there. (It's also set in a society that's ruled by The Company.)
The girls are also in the middle of their competition mindsets, so, while they seem sweet, they're all ready to take down their competition.
Most people don't know that there's a reason their mouth tingles a bit after eating pineapple—there's an enzyme in pineapple that breaks meat down. So while you're eating your sweet pineapple, it's eating you right back.
It felt fitting to add pineapple.
As silly as this book is though, with the air-headed conversations and the commercials (you read that right), there are some really heavy topics being discussed. Racism comes up almost immediately. One of the girls is transgender, which sparks an important discussion. Living with a disability is shown through a contestant that's hearing-impaired.
Control is a huge theme in this book. The Company controls the world. Parents control their teenagers by giving them something called "Bipolar Bears," which are exactly what you think they are: mood-leveling gummy bears. The girls control everything about themselves with teeth whiteners, self-tanners, diets, and an unhealthy supply of Lady 'Stache Off.
Presentation is everything, and these girls know it.
Tropical Fruit Salad
-1 mango
-1 c pineapple, cubed
-1 dragon fruit
-1 c raspberries
-3/4 c sweetened coconut flakes
1. I bought a whole pineapple, but canned would work just as well. I cut a third off of the side of the pineapple, then cut the skin off. After that, you cut it into cubes. If you go over the 1 cup, that's fine, but you don't really want 2 cups of pineapple because it's never fun to eat a fruit salad and have too much of one fruit.
2. For the mango, you can't just cut it in half because of the pit. So I cut around the pit, set the two big pieces aside, then try to get as much off the pit a possible. When I'm done doing that, I take the big pieces and cut the fruit out of the skin. After that, I cut them into bite-sized pieces. They weren't quite cubed because I wanted them to stand out from the pineapple.
3. I wanted to do something a bit different with the dragon fruit. I decided to make melon balls to add a bit of shape and to really make it stand out. I got as many balls out of it as I could, then I scraped the rest of the fruit out of the skin with a spoon.
4. I rinsed the raspberries off then threw them in a medium-sized bowl. There isn't really anything you can do to them other than that.
5. Throw the coconut in with the raspberries, then add all of the other fruit, and toss it all together. You want to be careful when you're tossing it because the raspberries and dragon fruit break pretty easily.
I decided to serve some of the fruit salad in the dragon fruit skin because deserted islands don't usually have bowls. It also looked good, which the girls would all appreciate.
It tasted way better than grapefruit and hot sauce, too.
