I find it hard to make recipes using watermelon. It’s usually the first thing I cross off my shopping list when I realize I am buying too much to walk home with without having strangers asking me if I need help (so embarrassing). When I do manage to get one home, it’s delicious watermelon that needs no help beyond a sleepover in the fridge to make it pure, sweet, hydrating perfection. In other words, it gets eaten as is, and any thoughts of a recipe get put on hold, sometimes even until the following summer.
This summer has been a little bit different. Watermelon is very cooling and our bodies seem to know this instinctively, craving it when the weather gets warm. It’s hard to remember now, but the weather here was warm, even kind of hot at the beginning of the summer and the watermelon turnover was high. Over the last couple of weeks of sporadic rain, clouds and cool weather, I found we had a rare stockpile of watermelon (well, two).