Sunday, June 3, 2018

How's your melon?


                  How do you have your melon?
                             The various methods of serving watermelon and utensils of choice for consuming it have always intrigued me.
                             Picking the perfect melon, hauling it home, clearing space for it in the fridge and wrestling it into storage containers is slightly less of an ordeal now than when I was a kid. I used to cringe when one came home because I knew it would stress out one or more adults in the house who had to contend with it.
                             They were long and heavy and had so many seeds and what if you went through all that trouble and it wasn’t any good? Someone could hold that against the person who thought it was a good idea to take one home. Just sayin.’
                             These days watermelons are commonly smaller and seedless. I don’t think I’ve dealt with significant seed count in years.
                             My vision is that if I get one on the weekend, thick, sweet and juicy slices will be the focal point of evening meals and water down any other food choices that sent the scale numbers climbing. But then you get that “I feel like I ate a watermelon” sensation, which comes from eating pretty much all of a watermelon.
                             My mom used a dinner knife to stab her portions on her plate and now I use a very sharp knife to do the same. She’d probably tell me that was dangerous, like running with scissors. I’ve always wondered, who was in such a hurry for scissors that you’d be running. Anyway, my husband prefers a spoon. But that’s because I serve him the rounded end, so I can get that out of the way and fit whatever’s left over into the fridge.
                             A few summers ago, a produce manager suggested I look for yellow bottoms and stem “tails” that suggested the melon had been in the field for a while.
                             Readers, let me know your melon selecting and recipe tricks.
                             Darragh Doiron is a local foodie who is not ashamed to sometimes make a meal from one food group, such as melon or popcorn. Write to her at darraghcastillo@icloud.com

No comments:

Post a Comment