watermelon

I have always loved watermelon. 

When I was a little kid, my mom would cut up and entire watermelon and place all the fruit into a huge bowl, which was then kept in the fridge.  We would eat out of that huge bowl for days. My poor mother standing at the sink, fighting each little damn seed just to make our little bellies happy.  

When I was big, fat, and pregnant with both kids, I ate a ton of the stuff.  It started as a way to fight off the damn constipation I suffered with Ben, sorry for the TMI - but it worked!  Now, the kids love watermelon too. 

You need to eat it, and since it is in season, do it! 

Have you ever read up on how good this stuff is for you?  (read the whole write-up on whfoods.com) Well, let me tell you a thing or two about it if you don't want to venture over here...and remember this is just how I process the information in my non-nutritionist-head: it is loaded with antioxidants like beta-carotene and lycopene.  Here is my understanding of what these antioxidants do to your body: your body can be full of free radicals, which are bad.  These bad free radicals do things like cause cholesterol to stick in all the wrong places, and cause cancer to set up in all the wrong places.  Well, lycopene travels through your system with its little super blaster gun and neutralizes all these bad things.  Imagine those little blaster shooting away at all those radicals - pew! pew!  It is also loaded with fiber - and we all know how good fiber is for you.

Ok, so how do you choose the right watermelon?  That, I don't know.  I thought I was onto a certain technique last summer, but that failed eventually.  Now, I just put my hands in the big bin, pull a heavy one out, and hope for the best.

I buy seedless watermelon...it makes cutting it so much easier.  No more fighting every seed like my mom used to do.





















Here is how I prepare the watermelon on our house:

Step 1.  Wash it...at least rinse it off.  The thing can be caked in dirt.

Step 2. Cut the end "bowl" off.  I tend to take this bowl, grab a spoon, and dig in!  Yum!

 Step 3. once the melon is nice and flat on that one side, cut off a ring, about one inch thick.

Step 4. cut off the rind

Step 5: start cubing it...cut it into strips one way, and then the other:

Step 6: place watermelon cubes into bowl



It is that easy!  I usually do about two "rings" to fill the bowl.  This amount will last about 2 days.  I find that if I cut up the entire watermelon at once, the bottom cubes get gross after day 2.  If I do a couple rings at once, the watermelon stays good and fresh.

It is so much easier to just grab some watermelon chunks out of a bowl and scarf down, then to get the melon out of the fridge...cut it into a slice...and then eat the slice...and then throw the rind away.  Convenience people! If you keep good foods convenient and accessible, then you will be more likely to reach for it.

Smacznego!