Amy Riolo: Hi! I'm Amy Riolo for the U.

S. Apple Association. Today, we're showing you how to incorporate apples into a healthy lifestyle.

This recipe is Apple-Cilantro Salsa. The ingredients which we'll need are three unpeeled apples, cored and diced; one half cup cherry tomatoes, quartered; one half ripe avocado, peeled and diced; two tablespoons of green onion, including the top; one tablespoon chopped, fresh cilantro leaves; one teaspoon granulated sugar; one teaspoon fresh lime juice; one teaspoon minced Jalapeno pepper; one half teaspoon minced garlic; salt, and pepper.

To begin, the first thing that we'll do is place our apples into our salad bowl. We're soaking them in a vitamin C fortified apple juice. You can always use lemon juice, lime juice to prevent browning in apples, but if you soak them in actual apple juice, it enhances their flavor that much more.

So what I'm going to do now is just drain these and apples make a great snack and they can be incorporated into so many things. So it's really fun to experiment with them and to use them in new ways. I'm going to add in my avocado. This is such a great combination, because you have the really crisp apple and then you have the nice, tender avocado and they taste great together.

Now I'm going to add in my green onions and you'll notice here I use the onion part at the very bottom and then I use some of the top also and then I'm going to add in my cherry tomatoes. I have the Jalapeno pepper. Depending upon how hot they are, let that be the guide to how much you add, and if you don't like any heat at all, you could add a little bit of diced sweet green bell pepper instead of the Jalapeno, that would be absolutely fine. And then I'm going to add cilantro. Cilantro is just fresh coriander. Some people don't like the flavor; if you don't, you can use parsley, but it's really delicious. I urge you to try it. It also has lots of great health benefits as well like, lowering blood sugar levels in diabetics.

Then we're going to add in our minced garlic and we'll add in some sugar. Sugar just really enhances the sweetness of the apple; it's a very little amount, but it helps to bring those flavors together and also lime juice. I'm just going to squeeze some right into my hand here. It's going to help the flavors melt together, the citrus in the lime juice is going to help prevent any further browning of the avocado and it tastes great together, because most traditional guacamoles always have little bit of lime juice in them.

If you don't have lime on hand, you could very easily use lemon and it would still taste great. Remember to keep your limes at room temperature and to just roll them on the counter little bit before you use them and then you can get the maximum amount of juice out of them.

So now I'm just going to stir these up together and it stays really well in the refrigerator for a few days; you can make it in large quantities and then put it in lunches or like we're going to do today, eat it as a snack with tortilla chips. It tastes great and it's really something that the whole family will love. It's also nice if you're having people over to watch game or just entertaining in general, to be able to serve them a nice, healthy appetizer like this. I'm going to add some salt and a little bit of the freshly ground black pepper. We'll stir it up one more time.

So now that our salad's all mixed, I'm going to cover it with aluminum foil and we'll place it in the refrigerator and we'll come back in an hour and show you how to plate it and serve it.

So our Apple-Cilantro Salsa has been in the refrigerator for a few hours and the flavors have really married together well. So you can go ahead and serve it. You can see how nice and fresh it still looks and you can serve this with pita chips or with a whole grain tortilla. You can eat it over lettuce leaves just like this, as part of a salad, but it's really a wonderful accompaniment to any protein in the summer. We're going to serve it with our whole grain tortilla chips.

So we've just finished making our healthful snack of Apple-Cilantro Salsa. Up next, we've got a great lunch idea of Apple-Cheddar Panini.