Somebody I follow on Twitter recently confessed that she had never really liked watermelon.
She had lots of sympathizers. I despised the stuff as a kid, and simply avoided it as an adult.
Who wants a submarine-sized "fruit" full of seeds, hopelessly mushy, and watery to boot? Oh, and no flavor.
Well, that was the old days.
I wasn't necessarily jonesing for watermelon to eat, but the blogosphere was riddled with swanky watermelon cocktails. That's what I wanted.
Cranky found a small, round specimen, and it happened to be seedless. OH! And it happened to be very tasty and crisp. We cut little wedges off, and almost couldn't stop eating.
No, this watermelon is to be absorbed by straw, I proclaimed. I don't "eat" watermelon. Koko the signing gorilla famously called watermelon "drink fruit," and I was going to drink it. Because I take orders from signing gorillas.
OK, so Cranky carved chunks and whacked off the rinds, and (girly sigh) squeezed the watermelon with his bare hands! My ape man.
Then we decided to get jiggy wid it. We squeezed juice from both Meyer lemons and Summer Navel oranges, and added that to the watermelon juice.
Would the fantastic flavor be drowned out?
No, it was still very watermelon, with a hint of mild citrus. Really good. So nice! That newfangled watermelon sure tastes great.
I might eat some.
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21 comments:
"RANDOM," "EPIC": WORDS YOU ARE MISUSING
How about that's an epic symphony in taste and color? In any case - what a gorgeous photo! Such luminescent colors!
Koko - haven't thought of her in ages but her signing was really exciting to me years ago - I almost applied to work with her. So cool.
By hand?! Primal, I'm impressed.
But....where's the booze?
Nancy: Oh, thanks. I have to confess the effect in the photo is from post-production pootin' around. : /
Zoomie: Koko and Penny Patterson were at Stanford the same time I was. I never met them, but I did run into Michael, Koko's erstwhile male companion, in an empty field. As I approached, his handler said, "You should get out of here." And I wondered if handling was even happening, or was this an escape? I fled.
Greg: He's got stones like rocks. :D
Kudzu: Oh, um... There was booze. A nice, light rum. I went to bed early.
Watermelon is one of those fruits I always wished I understood: People LOVE this stuff, but why??
Cocktails were the first thing that got me thinkin', but then grilling a hunk and eating it like a burger (as per Mark Bittman's so-crazy-it-just-might-work suggestion) made me something of a convert...
...
Okay, so it was mostly the cocktails. But still!
I'd have fled, too, in that situation. Those guys are BIG.
Somehow I feel reassured.
Hi, Mr. Meister: Eating watermelon is pure tradition. And when corporate grocery stores took over all our food choices, we sheepishly went along with ruined, flavorless food, and pretended it was normal. Eating this really nice, organic watermelon showed me what once was, what could be. It's a shocker. I really liked it.
Cocktails, too. Not bad. ;)
Zoomie: In retrospect, I wonder what the hell I was doing, approaching an untethered beast. He was only one or two years old then, not tame. Koko is 40 now!
Kudzu: I do it all for you. xx
When I was wee watermelon was crisp, crunchy and slightly sweet. We'd sit on the steps and spit the seeds as far as we could, dribbling pink juice down our faces.
We were disgusting little raggamuffins but I do, still, like watermelon in the summer, it's better than eating sugary iceblocks. And grown up watermelon consumption, well, yummy *hic*
The squeezing is funny. No food processor? And, no vodka?
Mouse: I can only conclude that we lived in non-watermelon areas when I was little. The watermelon my parents bought came from the navy commissary. Which means as shitty and cheap as possible. We never bought it at roadside stands.
I like it now!
Dog: yeah, I guess he was too lazy to get out the appliances. Or maybe it was a total sensual pleasure...
Yes, there was a little hooch. Rum.
So sorry you lived in a non-melon zone as a child. We had watermelon parties on summer afternoons when we put on our bathing suits and our mothers cut up many big green sweet melons for us to eat. Seed-spitting contests and carving "teeth" from the white rinds, letting the juices run down our bodies, all that was just plain fun. At the end we were hosed down, another literally cool thing. And the melons came in from the country on the backs of trucks, 10 cents each.
Kudzu: I do remember my parents saying now and then, "This doesn't taste like it did when we were young." About all kinds of foods. Sadly, they just went along with it and bought the crappy commissary food.
Hosed off! What a wonderful memory. And I'm thinking, what an easy thing for parents, to distract their kids and give them great pleasure.
Ten cents.
It occurs to me that you are lucky, in an odd way, that your parents were not all that interested in good food. You are having your own personal food renaissance these days, figuring out what tastes best to you and how you like to eat and how you prefer to prepare things.
Zoomie: The funny thing is, my mom was a "gourmet cook"! But she apparently had little regard for ingredients. If she could substitute a cheaper item, she would.
I think that was true of most American women of her (and my Mom's) generation. Open a can and embellish was considered "gurmay." My mother made an absolutely revolting cassoulet and it wasn't until I had real cassoulet that I understood just how dreadful Mom's was. The weird part is that my mother lived in France for a year before she was married and should have known better!
Zoomie: No, my mom was a pretty good cook. Just cheap. She made her own baklava, homemade fillo and all!
I jazzed up some watermelon juice with, lime juice, club soda, and a splash of lemon thyme-infused simple syrup. Delish!
EatClose: Sounds lovely. Inspires me to try more flavors. Thanks!
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