June 30, 2019
“Warning: Do not scoop your
watermelon”
If
you haven’t had a good watermelon this year, you need to drop this newspaper
and go get one of those round, seedless melons from the grocery store. They’re
the best, Jerry.
Kay
and I brought some cut-up watermelon to a family reunion last week and it was a
big hit. There was cake and pie and cookies, but everyone bragged on the
watermelon. I was so proud of me. Kay picked the thing out, but I was the one
who cut it up. There’s an art to it.
I
once scooped out a watermelon, but I’ll never do that again. You can scoop a cantaloupe;
you can scoop an avocado; and if you’re crazy enough, you might be able to
scoop a banana. But, don’t ever scoop a watermelon. The little balls may look
cute, but the melon will be all squished together. You do not want to compress
your melon. Balls of compressed watermelon are meant for throwing, not eating.
By
the way, when I bought the round, seedless melon, I also bought a big, long
Hempstead seedless melon. I was going to take the big Hempstead melon to the
reunion, but discovered early in the slicing that it had seeds in it. I was
getting ready to take a picture of the thing so I could take it back for a
refund, but Kay pulled the sticker off the melon and showed me that it was
“seeded” not “unseeded.” When I read the word “seed,” my brain saw the word as
“no seeds.” I mean who advertises the fact that they’re selling watermelons
with seeds?
So,
I cut the heart out of the melon, and picked seeds out of a few chunks and then
took it over to Big Al at the golf range. My kid brother seemed less than
impressed. I made a mental note: Don’t ever de-seed a watermelon for Al. And, I
won’t.
We’ve
purchased about four watermelons from HEB so far this year. Only problem is,
Kay keeps giving away half of the stuff I cut up. Don’t get me wrong. I like
people. I just think they should get off their buns and go get their own
watermelon. Know what I mean?
I
must say, before you showed up, I did some research on people’s favorite fruit.
I wanted to see how watermelon was ranked. Well, in 2018, watermelon was the
sixth most popular fruit. (I really don’t care to get into a squabble over
whether or not berries, nuts, melons, and M&Ms are actually fruits. So,
let’s drop it.)
The
most popular fruit last year was bananas. Seems 73 percent of those questioned,
say they occasionally buy bananas. What they didn’t say was that if you wrap
the stem of a banana in aluminum foil, it would slow the rotting process. – I
read that in a web-site popup about stuff I didn’t know. You know stuff like
WD-40 can be used to clean your toilet. So can socks, but nobody ever mentions
that.
What
gets me is that the 15th most popular fruit was the raspberry. Without
a doubt, the raspberry has the second most powerful ad agency on the planet.
Second only to the pumpkin. They put raspberries in everything, Ice cream,
bread, coffee, dressing, cereal, marshmallows, crackers, peanut butter… When
they start putting ‘em in Cheetos, I’m moving to Canada. Those people won’t
even experiment with mustard. – Which reminds me, the potato was the most
popular vegetable in 2018.
No
surprise there. Rice didn’t even make it into the top 20. Onions and tomatoes
were two and three. Corn was 11. Can you believe that? Bell peppers, cucumbers,
and celery beat corn! Who were the people who took the veggie survey? Were they
all from Delaware?
Coming
in at 18, 19 and 20 were cauliflower, cabbage and asparagus. I imagine the
reason “rice” didn’t make it on the list is because somebody is trying to turn
cauliflower into rice. A couple of months ago I went to the freezer section of
HEB and grabbed a bag of rice right there in the rice section. Turned out to be
chopped up cauliflower made to look like rice. I guess I’ll have to start
reading labels.
I
also found a list of America’s most popular meats. There were only 14 listed. I
thought that odd, until I read the last meat on the list. It was rabbit. Any
meat past rabbit wouldn’t be worth listing. Some of ‘em before rabbit didn’t
need to be on the list. Bison and duck were 13 and 12. When’s the last time you
cooked a duck?
And
get this, the ninth most popular meat in the US is Alaskan Pollock. I believe
that’s a fish. I’ll bet it’s a “semi pelagic schooling fish widely distributed
in the North Pacific with largest concentrations found in the eastern Bering
Sea.” Just a guess. Wikipedia guessed the same thing.
The
top four meats in reverse order of popularity were turkey, pork, beef, and
chicken. This tends to make me think that popularity of meat is somewhat
related to cost. When turkey beats shrimp, the entire survey is skewed. Yes, I
like turkey. I eat it twice a year. Shrimp, on the other hand, is one of my top
three favorite meats, the other two being ribs and fried chicken. Their ranking
varies depending on my mood at the time of the meal.
Which
reminds me, it’s close to mealtime. I don’t know what we’ve got on hand, but I
have a craving for barbequed potato chips, fried chicken and Cheetos. I don’t
want my Cheetos hot or puffy or raspberried. I’ll just take ‘em plain, thank
you.
end
hayter.mark@gmail.com
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