Food Friday: Cooling Off with Watermelon

Welcome to the dog days of summer. We have just started our long slog through August, yearning for relief while gasping for a cool breeze and grasping at (paper) straws in our cocktails. Through this wretchedly long month we droop, we melt, and we puddle in the heat. Thank goodness today is Friday.

August is the hottest month in our hemisphere. We enjoy air conditioning in our cars and houses so any time we spend outdoors seems hellishly warm. Even Luke the wonder dog is tired of the heat. Halfway through our morning walk he lay down in the shade, and refused to budge. He is not a fan of the dog days.

The pleasures of childhood are fleeting. Do you remember spitting watermelon seeds? It was a great past time of mine. Finally I could get my brother back for for being taller, older and more sophisticated. He could sink a basketball, shoot rubber bands, flip baseball cards and catch pop balls much better than I ever could. But I could aim and deliver a watermelon seed with deadly accuracy. At short range, at least. And sitting on the back steps, keeping the sticky, dripping watermelon juice outside, away from parental oversight, was the perfect spot for getting even. Tempus does indeed fugit. My brother and I are not likely to try to even up the score with watermelon seeds these days. Now we tend to be very kind to one another.

And today there are seedless watermelons. Where is the fun in that? I was wandering though the grocery store today and spotted New Belgium Juicy Watermelon Lime Ale. Again, I must ask, where is the fun?

Now that I am too old to play with watermelon, I must find more adult uses for it. In pursuit of my utopian ideal of not cooking much beyond the necessary nutrients in the summer.

Food52 always has excellent ideas: https://food52.com/blog/22683-watermelon-and-goat-cheese-salad-with-a-verbena-infused-vinaigrette

This is my kind of recipe: https://www.farmerandchefsouth.com/recipes/


Watermelon Gazpacho Salad
4 cups cubed, seeded watermelon
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 small yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
1/2 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco cheese, optional
Combine watermelon, cilantro, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, and jalapeno in a large bowl. Whisk together olive oil, vinegar, salt, and cumin; drizzle over watermelon mixture and toss gently. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour. Sprinkle with cheese before serving, if using. Makes 4.

This next recipe violates my basic summer tenets, but perhaps you would enjoy eating something cooked this summer: https://www.pbs.org/food/features/a-chefs-life-season-4-episode-2-my-watermelon-baby/

Back in my Washington College days we had a legendary Reid Hall party that featured a spiked watermelon. We thought we were so daring and original! Martha never served anything so banal. Here is her spin on spiked watermelon: https://www.marthastewart.com/315329/tequila-soaked-watermelon-wedges

Perhaps this is the route my brother and I should take out on the back steps these days: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/watermelon-mojitos-recipe-2105428
I’ve even got the homegrown mint!

Find some backyard cocktail glasses before you start mixing up your own concoctions – something colorful and durable. Something to flash color and spark back to the fireflies as we all sit out the hot month in our backyards, while we are waiting for the Perseid meteor showers to begin.

This is pretty kicky – The Frida.

I’m sure Frida Kahlo, the ultimate in cool, knew how to refresh in the summer heat of Mexico.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/drinks/how-to/g827/summer-cocktail-recipes/
1.5 ounce jalapeño-infused tequila
2 ounce of watermelon purée (purée pieces of watermelon in blender)
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
3/4 ounce simple syrup
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Shake and strain into a glass, garnish with lime, and serve.

This is one of my all time junior high school favorite poems, and I haul it out every couple of years. Indulge me:

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity

During that summer
When unicorns were still possible;
When the purpose of knees
Was to be skinned;
When shiny horse chestnuts
(Hollowed out
Fitted with straws
Crammed with tobacco
Stolen from butts
In family ashtrays)
Were puffed in green lizard silence
While straddling thick branches
Far above and away
From the softening effects
Of civilization;
During that summer–
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was–
Watermelons ruled.
Thick imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part,
The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other;
And when the ammunition was spent,
There was always another bite:
It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.
The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.
But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which maybe never was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.
-John Tobias