Summer Salad

One of my favorite things to eat in the summer are fruit salads. They're cool, healthy, and taste GREAT! Growing up, I was exposed to a plethera of fruit salads - granted most of them are varities of Jello, go figure - and so I thought I'd share one of my favorites. It's very easy to make. The key to this salad though is to make sure that everything is WELL DRAINED! If you do not, then you'll have a soggy salad. Not sure what the rest of you would call this, but our family calls it...

Frog Eye Salad

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked acini de pepe pasta
1 20 oz. can crushed pineapple
1 20 oz. can chunk pineapple
1 cup sugar
2 Tbs. cornstarch
1 beaten egg yolk
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 15 oz. can apricot halves
1 15 oz. can mandarin oranges
3 medium bananas

Directions:
1. Cook pasta in medium saucepan for 7-8 minutes, or until tender. Drain well and place in large bowl. Drain both cans of pineapple and reserve juice for sauce. Set pineapple aside.
2. Combine sugar and cornstarch in medium saucepan. Add pineapple juice and whisk until sugar/cornstarch is dissolved. Cook over medium heat until thick and clear. Pour half the mixture in with the egg yolk and then pour back into saucepan. Cook for 1 minute and then remove from heat. Add lemon juice. Whisk well and pour into bowl with pasta. Allow pasta and sauce to chill overnight (sauce will thicken, so do not worry about adding more cornstarch!).
3. Drain apricots and oranges VERY well. Dice apricots. Combine with pineapple and add to pasta/sauce mixture. Chill until ready to serve. Right before serving, slice bananas into salad (if you do it right before, you'll keep the bananas from going brown).