The Taste of Austerity: Watermelon

The only problem with watermelon is cutting it up. It's big and heavy, it requires a huge knife, and even worse, about 10 minutes of your time. But a snack, a cocktail, and a salad, all from just one? Well worth the effort.

Every time I buy a watermelon it's the same. I dither (can I be bothered?), then I buy (sigh), then rediscover it's absolutely worth the effort. Everyone loves eating watermelon, and when the circumstance is right (most of the time), everyone loves drinking watermelon juice.

You can make popsicles. You can freeze the juice, then let it defrost a bit, break it up to make a faux granita, and serve it with ice cream. You can mix it with vodka for a simple summer cocktail. You can add it to sparkling wine to make an otherwise unspectacular bottle quite delicious. And it's not hard to get the juice - you simply pop chunks into a strainer, set it on top of a bowl, and force the chunks down, mortar-and-pestle style.

Today I was cutting a watermelon while a friend was over (the best time to cut a watermelon), and she asked me if I'd ever had watermelon salad. I thought maybe I had, but certainly didn't have one in my recipe box. She looked it up, and read the ingredients to me. Red onion, feta, parsley, mint, pitted black olives, lime juice and, of course, watermelon. I almost fell over. "I have to have this tonight!"

And so I did. And it was so good. Sweet, savory, refreshing.

I love the recipe even more, since Nigella offers an abbreviated version if you're short on time or ingredients: watermelon, feta, mint, lime. (It's that mint/lime combo once again. It's all about mint and lime together.)

Which leads me to wonder what mint, lime and watermelon would taste like with vodka...

Ah, watermelon. So very worth it.