Kids Dish

One of the best parts of late summer is the abundance of sweet, ripe melons. Sure you can usually get cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon all year long at the supermarket, but that stuff is like soggy cardboard compared to the huge variety of melons available come summertime.

No matter what kind of melon you choose, they’re a perfect summer snack. They taste best chilled, either right from the fridge or right from the picnic cooler. You can use them in fruit salads, salsas, cold soups and sorbets. The shells make pretty serving dishes- watermelon shells are a gorgeous vessel for fruit salads. And kids love melon. I’ve never met a kid who didn’t like to spit a watermelon seed (all the more reason to avoid the seedless varieties!) Melon balls are fun and easy for kids to make (and for some reason the phrase melon ball always makes me giggle.)

You can buy melons precut in the supermarket, but you’re much better off buying them whole at the farmer’s market. When picking a watermelon, look for a melon that’s mostly blemish free, symmetrical, and evenly colored with a dull, not shiny, exterior. If it’s hollow when you thump it, it should be ripe. All other melons are easy to pick at the farmer’s market- if they smell delicious, 9 times out of ten they’ll taste delicious. But at the supermarket, when they’ve most likely been refrigerated for a while before they get there, they won’t be so easy to smell. In that case, when you’re choosing honeydew, cantaloupe, casaba, cranshaw, canary or any other variety, look for melons that are slightly fragrant and are heavy for their size. You’ll need to pick up a lot of melons to get the hang of judging ripeness by weight, so if you see someone handling every melon in the pile it’s not as strange as it looks.

If you’re looking to expand your melon repertoire, here’s a quick, easy recipe for melon salsa. It’s delicious with tortilla chips, or as a topping for fish or chicken.

Melon Salsa

1/4 cup fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar
3 cups chopped seeded watermelon
1 cup chopped seeded honeydew melon or cantaloupe
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, chopped
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
2 tablespoons minced seeded jalapeño chilies

Whisk lime juice and sugar in large bowl until sugar dissolves. Add watermelon and all remaining ingredients; toss gently. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

melon, melon salsa recipe, no cook recipe