Who doesn’t love melons?  To me, melons are the quintessential summer time treat, even more so than a snowball or ice cream.  I mean, you can get ice cream any time of the year and it will taste basically the same.  Not so for melons.

We’re a house divided.  Men vs Women.  Boys vs Girls.  Mom vs everyone else in the house.  :)   I adore watermelon.  This goes back to gardening with my grandfather when I was a little kid.  We would look forward to cutting that juicy melon open and just sitting out on the steps out back, sucking it up.  Redd and the boys prefer the cantaloupe.  Plain jane, sherbert orange cantaloupe.

Ok, I shouldn’t give cantaloupe such a hard time.  It comes ripe faster than watermelons.  I get a bit of a taste for melons early on in June rather than having to wait till the end of June or Heaven forbid, early July for those ripe juicy watermelons.  Cantaloupes have all their seeds in the center so it’s much easier to clean and eat.  They’re pretty versatile for smoothies or salads or just on their own as a cooling treat.  Yes, you can make watermelon gazpacho or watermelon salsa or watermelon mojitos, but why bother when watermelon is just so darn delicious straight up?

I was extremely happy today when I went to the farmer’s market.  Watermelons were in.  I bought the “small” one, plus another cantaloupe for the guys and came home.  I cut the cantaloupe into wedges and then sliced into the watermelon.  To be honest, this one probably could have gone another week before harvest.  It’s rind was a bit thick, but it’s still delicious.  I’ve got two containers of watermelon chilling in the fridge for a later afternoon snack.  And probably an early evening snack.  And if I stay up, a late night snack too.

You can keep nasty cantaloupe, precious, I’ll keep watermelon.  What’s your favorite melon?

I’m submitting this post to Two for Tuesdays Blog Hop which is hosted by Alex at A Moderate Life.